This module provides various helpful utilities for dealing with binary input and output.

You can use this module to deal with binary blocks of data as either Strings or lists of Word8. The BinaryConvertible class provides this abstraction.

Wherever you see HVIO, you can transparently substite a regular Handle. This module can work with any HVIO object, however. See System.IO.HVIO for more details.

Versions of MissingH prior 0.11.6 lacked the BinaryConvertible class and worked only with Strings and Handles.

Important note: /binary functions are not supported in all Haskell implementations/. Do not import or use this module unless you know you are using an implementation that supports them. At this time, here is the support status:

• GHC 6.2 and above: yes
• GHC 6.x, earlier versions: unknown
• GHC 5.x: no
• nhc98: no
• Hugs: partial (maybe complete; needs more testing)

Non-binary functions may be found in System.IO.

See also: System.IO.BlockIO

Written by John Goerzen, jgoerzen@complete.org

Copies everything from the input handle to the output handle using binary blocks of the given size. This was once the following beautiful implementation:

 hBlockCopy bs hin hout = hBlockInteract bs hin hout id

(id is the built-in Haskell function that just returns whatever is given to it)

In more recent versions of MissingH, it uses a more optimized routine that avoids ever having to convert the binary buffer at all.

Copies one filename to another in binary mode.

Please note that the Unix permission bits on the output file cannot be set due to a limitation of the Haskell openBinaryFile function. Therefore, you may need to adjust those bits after the copy yourself.

This function is implemented using hBlockCopy internally.

As a wrapper around the standard function hPutBuf, this function takes a standard Haskell String instead of the far less convenient Ptr a. The entire contents of the string will be written as a binary buffer using hPutBuf. The length of the output will be the length of the passed String or list.

If it helps, you can thing of this function as being of type Handle -> String -> IO ()

Acts a wrapper around the standard function hGetBuf, this function returns a standard Haskell String (or [Word8]) instead of modifying a 'Ptr a' buffer. The length is the maximum length to read and the semantice are the same as with hGetBuf; namely, the empty string is returned with EOF is reached, and any given read may read fewer bytes than the given length.

(Actually, it's a wrapper around vGetBuf)

An alias for hPutBlocks stdout putBlocks :: (BinaryConvertible b) => [[b]] -> IO () putBlocks = hPutBlocks stdout

Returns a lazily-evaluated list of all blocks in the input file, as read by hGetBufStr. There will be no 0-length block in this list. The list simply ends at EOF.