I wrote:
Here is a simple example of how to use ShowS...
Christian Maeder wrote:
I think, this examples shows, why ShowS is rarely used!
I understand your feelings. The sections of ++ do look awkward on the surface, though in practice it's not really much of an issue.
It would even be longer if you used "showString" instead of these (ugly) sections with ++ (instead of using ++ directly).
Yes. That's why I used the sections in my examples, instead of the Prelude function "showString". Most other function-composition-style pretty-printing libraries using something shorter than "showString", like "text", to replace the ++ sections. Then it comes out the same length. You could use something even shorter. But saving a few keystrokes is not the point. The point is writing the expression as a compositional pipeline, which is conceptually nice, and more or less the same complexity in syntax.
I don't think, there's a performance issue, either. (++ is right-associative).
I think you're right. That was more of an issue for early compilers.
Creating a (better formatted) list of strings and then using "concat", "unwords", "unlines" or "intercalate ", " is quite a good choice.
Indeed, it's fine, and it's the most popular. Once you realize the beauty and power of the compositional combinator approach in general, though, using that approach also for rendering becomes an attractive alternative. Especially in situations where you might want to insert other combinators into the pipeline. Anyway, I think that's a more complete answer to Christopher's original question about ShowS. Thanks, Yitz