Haskell strings field guide

Here's how to convert between byte, string, and character types in Haskell:

Function	Type
encodeUtf8	Text -> ByteString
unpack	Text -> String
decodeLatin1	ByteString -> Text
decodeUtf8With lenientDecode	ByteString -> Text
BC.unpack	ByteString -> String
UTF8.toString	ByteString -> String
B.unpack	ByteString -> [Word8]
UTF8.fromString	String -> ByteString
pack	String -> Text
w2c	Word8 -> Char
B.pack	[Word8] -> ByteString
c2w ❌ partial	Char -> Word8
BC.pack ❌ partial	String -> ByteString
BSC.string ❌ stops streaming	String -> BSC.ByteString

Note that Char is finite:

toEnum 10000000 :: Char
*** Exception: Prelude.chr: bad argument: 10000000