Haskell Platform proposal: Add the vector package

[Roman Leshchinskiy]

Simon Marlow wrote:
>
> Just to repeat what I said earlier, I don't see there being any
> objection to putting unsafeRead with the other unsafe functions in
> vector, even though technically it is safe.

Actually, this particular bit probably isn't a problem. I actually
simplified the example slightly. The real type of unsafeRead is:

unsafeRead :: (PrimMonad m, MVector v a) => v (PrimState m) a -> Int -> m a

Hier, m is either IO or ST. What I didn't realise was that runST is marked
as Trustworthy. This means that for ST-based code to be Trustworthy, it
must really be safe when executed. This is different from IO where Safe
Haskell doesn't care what happens when it's executed. I'm not sure if this
is documented anywhere, it certainly wasn't obvious to me. The end effect
is that while the IO instantiation of unsafeRead is safe, the ST one
isn't. Hence, it can't be marked as Trustworthy anyway. All functions on
mutable vectors are overloaded in this way, so it seems that the presence
of ST makes Safe Haskell's notion of safety much closer to the one vector
uses.

Roman