3. Literals and embedding

Sometimes we know at compile time what the (initial) contents of a Buffer is. It would be cumbersome to have to allocate the buffer and to write its content word by word at program initialization or before using the buffer. This chapter presents the alternatives.

3.1. List literals

If the buffer is very small, we can use the OverloadedLists extension to create an immutable buffer from a list of bytes. It allows the creation of small unpinned immutable buffers into GHC’s heap (aka BufferI).

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedLists #-}

b :: BufferI
b = [25,26,27,28] -- Word8 values

This should only be used for very small buffers. First, because it is not the most efficient way to build a buffer: the actual buffer will be created when it is first used. Second, because it is very cumbersome to list bytes’ values in a list.

3.2. Embedding files as buffers

You can embed an external file (or some part of it) into your executable. At runtime you can access it as a normal external buffer (mutable or not).

{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-}

import Haskus.Memory.Buffer
import Haskus.Memory.Embed

let b = $(embedFile "myfile.bin"
            True       -- is the resulting buffer mutable or not
            (Just 8)   -- optional alignment constraint
            (Just 10)  -- optional offset in the file
            (Just 128) -- optional number of bytes to include
         )

3.3. Embedding buffers using Template Haskell

If you know how to build your buffer at compile time, you can build it and embed it into the executable with Template Haskell by using embedBuffer.

import Haskus.Memory.Embed

embedBuffer
   :: Buffer mut pin fin heap -- ^ Source buffer
   -> Bool       -- ^ Should the embedded buffer be mutable or not
   -> Maybe Word -- ^ Optional alignement constraint
   -> Maybe Word -- ^ Optional offset in the source buffer
   -> Maybe Word -- ^ Optional number of bytes to include
   -> Q Exp      -- ^ BufferE or BufferME, depending on mutability parameter