how about searching code that's outside of the standard library? Hoogle doesn't seem to know about HaXml, or haskelldb for example (maybe I am missing something obvious) Quan

Seth Kurtzberg writes:

...

how about searching code that's outside of the standard library? Hoogle doesn't seem to know about HaXml, or haskelldb for example (maybe I am missing something obvious)

You want to distinguish between capabilities, and the fact that the database for hoogle may not include all the data that is available. If the issue is only the availability of the data, perhaps the best option is to add the data to hoogle.

Don't forget that, as well as a web engine, Hoogle is also a command-line tool. You can download it, and populate its database with all (and exactly) the libraries you have installed. Regards, Malcolm

Hi

- ability to index any library

Yes, runhaskell Setup haddock -hoogle will generate a hoogle database for any library. Hoogle 4 (currently in development) will make searching multiple libraries much much easier.

- ability to use from the console

Yes, although may currently be a bit broken (I'll make a command line release today hopefully which guarantees to work)

- command-line autocompletion

No, how do I add it? I use Windows which doesn't support this, but if someone gives me the technical details of how to do it, I'm sure I can add it. Thanks Neil

Hi

How would it work on Unix? I assume that the command-line program just takes it's input "from the command line", so it doesn't get invoked until after you've finished typing the command...

Unless this is a proposal to create a console version of hoogle, a bit like ghci, which could take advantage of System.Console.Readline.

I do have something like that in the works (hoogli), but its not ready for the world quite yet.

BTW, on Windows XP command line filename completion is enabled - just use the Tab key. On NT4 and W2K you have to tweak the registry to switch it on (and you can choose which key to use, if you don't like Tab).

Yes, I know command line completion works - but only for files, not for anything else, and there is no way to make it work for other things. However, I know that zsh can do funky things like autocompleting ssh paths etc - and I think I remember seeing that there was some way a program could tell zsh what it could autocomplete to - but that is a hazy memory from a while ago. Thanks Neil

Yes, I know command line completion works - but only for files, not for anything else, and there is no way to make it work for other things. However, I know that zsh can do funky things like autocompleting ssh paths etc - and I think I remember seeing that there was some way a program could tell zsh what it could autocomplete to - but that is a hazy memory from a while ago.

What I did, to make things more modular, was add an option to my program to list the completions of a given set of arguments. So prepending "--completions" to the argument list and running the program just prints out a list of completions for the last argument. It's not really correct, since the user might have backed up to e.g. the second-to-last argument and pressed TAB there, but I'm not sure how to fix it. It's probably a simple modification, that a real zsh person could figure out in a second. I have a file containing the following in my fpath: ---------------------------------------------------------------- #!/bin/zsh _haskell-man () { L=($($words[0] --completions $words)) compadd -a -- L } compdef _haskell-man hsman ---------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway, you say you are working on a command line interface - OK, but I think the current situation is just a bit embarrassing, and I have something that works now. I can access all Perl documentation with 'man', and that is very convenient. It is just two words, e.g.: $ man CGI I think it is reasonable to expect any other kind of documentation to be just as easy to look up. I think a satisfactory system for Haskell should: - be usable from the command line, and with tab completion (i.e. users shouldn't have to enter an interactive loop like ghci) - be able to show the haddock documentation for a given function (the most common usage) in one step (i.e. not 2 steps as with the hoogle web interface). when there is more than one match, my program chooses a default; the user can ask to see all matches with a separate option. this is usually preferable, because many functions, for instance foldl1, are defined in multiple places with exactly the same documentation (Prelude, Data.List, Data.Foldable), and the user doesn't care which one pops up. Best, Frederik -- http://ofb.net/~frederik/