Binary IO

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Data.Binary

There are a number of binary I/O libraries available for Haskell. The best to use is the new, semi-standard Data.Binary library:

   * Data.Binary

It's very simple to use, and provides a highly efficient, pure interface to binary serialisation.

For just writing binary data to file, use

   * System.IO

It is a part of the base package, so it comes with GHC.

A tutorial:

   * Serialisation and compression with Data Binary

See also Dealing with binary data

Other libraries

For very simple serialisation, use read and show.

If you have simple binary IO requirements, then Data.ByteString might be easiest -- you get a List-like interface to packed byte arrays (interface documented here). For more complex serialisation, Data.Binary would be preferred.