This module provides a family of immutable array data types, and is intended to be a replacement for Haskell's standard Array module. In addition, a family of mutable array types is provided by the MArray module (see Section 4.21).
Two new type classes are provided, HasBounds and IArray:
class HasBounds a where bounds :: Ix ix => a ix e -> (ix,ix) class HasBounds a => IArray a e where array :: Ix ix => (ix,ix) -> [(ix,e)] -> a ix e (!) :: Ix ix => a ix e -> ix -> e (//) :: Ix ix => a ix e -> [(ix,e)] -> a ix e instance HasBounds (Array.Array) instance IArray Array.Array e |
where the type variable a denotes the array type constructor, ix denotes the index type, and e is the element type.
The Array, (!), (//) and bounds methods provided are exactly analoguous to those provided by the Haskell 98 Array module, and indeed instances of HasBounds and IArray are provided for the standard Array type.
The UArray type is a flat, strict, unboxed array type, which has instances of IArray for common integral element types:
data UArray ix e instance HasBounds UArray instance IArray UArray Bool instance IArray UArray Char instance IArray UArray Int instance IArray UArray Word instance IArray UArray Addr instance IArray UArray (Ptr a) instance IArray UArray Float instance IArray UArray Double instance IArray UArray (StablePtr a) instance IArray UArray Int8 instance IArray UArray Int16 instance IArray UArray Int32 instance IArray UArray Int64 instance IArray UArray Word8 instance IArray UArray Word16 instance IArray UArray Word32 instance IArray UArray Word64 |
The idea here is that any code which currently uses a standard non-strict polymorphic Array with one of these element types can be easily converted to use UArray by simply importing IArray and changing the type of the array from Array to UArray. The application will then get the performance benefit of strict unboxed arrays, whithout making significant changes to the existing code.
The IArray module also provides versions of the standard array combinators from Haskell 98's Array module:
assocs :: (Ix ix, IArray a e) => a ix e -> [(ix,e)] indices :: (Ix ix, HasBounds a) => a ix e -> [ix] listArray :: (Ix ix, IArray a e) => (ix,ix) -> [e] -> a ix e elems :: (Ix ix, IArray a e) => a ix e -> [e] amap :: (Ix ix, IArray a x, IArray a y) => (x -> y) -> a ix x -> a ix y accum :: (Ix ix, IArray a e) => (e->f->e) -> a ix e -> [(ix,f)] -> a ix e accumArray :: (Ix ix, IArray a e) => (e->f->e) -> e -> (ix,ix) -> [(ix,f)] -> a ix e ixmap :: (Ix ix, Ix iy) => (ix,ix) -> (ix->iy) -> a iy e -> a ix e |