Using Haskell's Parsec to parse binary files?

Question

Parsec is designed to parse textual information, but it occurs to me that Parsec could also be suitable to do binary file format parsing for complex formats that involve conditional segments, out-of-order segments, etc.

Is there an ability to do this or a similar, alternative package that does this? If not, what is the best way in Haskell to parse binary file formats?

Answer 1

The key tools for parsing binary files are:

• Data.Binary
• cereal
• attoparsec

Binary is the most general solution, Cereal can be great for limited data sizes, and attoparsec is perfectly fine for e.g. packet parsing. All of these are aimed at very high performance, unlike Parsec. There are many examples on hackage as well.

Answer 2

You might be interested in AttoParsec, which was designed for this purpose, I think.

Answer 3

I've used Data Binary successfully.