Syntax changes due to TypeInType
Hello, I'm trying to update the haskell-src-exts parser for the syntax changes in GHC 8 but I'm struggling to find information about what exactly the kind equalities patch has changed. Could someone please give me a brief overview about what changes were made to the parser? I was waiting for the manual entry (D1995) but whilst it is illuminating about the semantic changes, the syntactic changes are a bit less clear to me. A very high-level overview would be helpful so I can then look at the diff to find the finer details. Matt
The TypeInType patch did relatively little to the abstract syntax. HsImplicitBndrs no longer separates type variables and kind variables. And there was some major surgery to the type/kind parser (discussed below). It's that last bit that you probably want to know about. But check out https://phabricator.haskell.org/rGHC6746549772c5cc0ac66c0fce562f297f4d4b80a2 and you'll see that not much changed.
The "major surgery" to the parser is concerned solely with parsing *. Because the kind * is parsed like an alphanumeric identifier and the type * is parsed like an infix operator, and because types and kinds have to share a parser, we can't use the old HsOpTy story. Instead, we essentially parse a bunch of space-separated tokens in a type as a list, stored in HsAppsTy. Then, in the renamer, once we know which * we're dealing with, we can get rid of HsAppsTy and go on with HsOpTy, etc., as usual. That's really it. There may be improvements possible to this scheme -- I'm far from wedded to it.
The bigger change in the syntax since GHC 7.10 is Simon's wildcard refactor, https://phabricator.haskell.org/rGHC1e041b7382b6aa329e4ad9625439f811e0f27232 The new story is quite well explained in a Note, starting at https://github.com/ghc/ghc/blob/master/compiler/hsSyn/HsTypes.hs#L137
There is also the addition of visible type application, but that's just two new constructor in HsExpr, HsAppType/HsAppTypeOut. I believe it's straightforward.
Are there other particular points giving you challenge?
Richard
On Mar 15, 2016, at 5:13 PM, Matthew Pickering
Hello,
I'm trying to update the haskell-src-exts parser for the syntax changes in GHC 8 but I'm struggling to find information about what exactly the kind equalities patch has changed. Could someone please give me a brief overview about what changes were made to the parser?
I was waiting for the manual entry (D1995) but whilst it is illuminating about the semantic changes, the syntactic changes are a bit less clear to me.
A very high-level overview would be helpful so I can then look at the diff to find the finer details.
Matt _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
participants (2)
-
Matthew Pickering -
Richard Eisenberg