I'm running into a bug in my code that makes me think that I don't really understand some of the details about F# and lazy evaluation. I know that F# evaluates eagerly and therefore am somewhat perplexed by the following function:
// Open a file, then read from it. Close the file. return the data.
let getStringFromFile =
File.OpenRead("c:\\eo\\raw.txt")
|> fun s -> let r = new StreamReader(s)
let data = r.ReadToEnd
r.Close()
s.Close()
data
When I call this in FSI:
> let d = getStringFromFile();;
System.ObjectDisposedException: Cannot read from a closed TextReader.
at System.IO.__Error.ReaderClosed()
at System.IO.StreamReader.ReadToEnd()
at <StartupCode$FSI_0134>.$FSI_0134.main@()
Stopped due to error
This makes me think that getStringFromFile
is being evaluated lazily--so I'm totally confused. I'm not getting something about how F# evaluates functions.
For a quick explanation of what's happening, lets start here:
let getStringFromFile =
File.OpenRead("c:\\eo\\raw.txt")
|> fun s -> let r = new StreamReader(s)
let data = r.ReadToEnd
r.Close()
s.Close()
data
You can re-write the first two lines of your function as:
let s = File.OpenRead(@"c:\eo\raw.txt")
Next, you've omitted the parentheses on this method:
let data = r.ReadToEnd
r.Close()
s.Close()
data
As a result, data
has the type unit -> string
. When you return this value from your function, the entire result is unit -> string
. But look what happens in between assigning your variable and returning it: you closed you streams.
End result, when a user calls the function, the streams are already closed, resulting in the error you're seeing above.
And don't forget to dispose your objects by declaring use whatever = ...
instead of let whatever = ...
.
With that in mind, here's a fix:
let getStringFromFile() =
use s = File.OpenRead(@"c:\eo\raw.txt")
use r = new StreamReader(s)
r.ReadToEnd()
You don't read from your file. You bind method ReadToEnd
of your instance of StreamReader
to the value data
and then call it when you call getStringFromFile()
. The problem is that the stream is closed at this moment.
I think you have missed the parentheses and here's the correct version:
// Open a file, then read from it. Close the file. return the data.
let getStringFromFile =
File.OpenRead("c:\\eo\\raw.txt")
|> fun s -> let r = new StreamReader(s)
let data = r.ReadToEnd()
r.Close()
s.Close()
data
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