February 2013 - Haskell-Cafe

PatternSignatures (rant)
by Johannes Waldmann 06 Apr '18

06 Apr '18

Dear all, (this is a rant - please ignore) why has "PatternSignatures" been renamed to "ScopedTypeVariables" (in ghc-6.10)? show me the alleged "type variable" in this code: do x :: Int <- [ 1 .. 10 ] ; return $ x^2 and why on earth do I need to use a language extension at all to get to the most basic thing of declarative programming: to declare the type of an identifier? This seriously hurts (me, at least) when teaching Haskell. Thanks - J.W.

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Commutative monads vs Applicative functors
by Ronald Guida 09 Jul '16

09 Jul '16

I have a few questions about commutative monads and applicative functors. >From what I have read about applicative functors, they are weaker than monads because with a monad, I can use the results of a computation to select between alternative future computations and their side effects, whereas with an applicative functor, I can only select between the results of computations, while the structure of those computations and their side effects are fixed in advance. But then there are commutative monads. I'm not exactly sure what a commutative monad is, but my understanding is that in a commutative monad the order of side effects does not matter. This leads me to wonder, are commutative monads still stronger than applicative functors, or are they equivalent? And by the way, what exactly is a commutative monad?

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ANNOUNCE: ioctl 0.0.1
by Maciej Piechotka 13 Sep '15

13 Sep '15

A package for type-safe I/O control. Currently only ioctl is supported. Currently simply a extract from my tuntap fork TODO: - Return the integer as well as structure (will break the API) - Port for Windows Network.Socket.IOCtl (as soon as I manage to setup some sane environment on this platform) - Wrapping around DeviceIoControl Example (in hsc): data NotRead = NotRead instance NotRead Int where ioctlReq _ = #const FIONREAD notRead s = ioctlsocket' s NotRead Regards

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RFC: rewrite-with-location proposal
by Michael Snoyman 30 Mar '15

30 Mar '15

Quite a while back, Simon Hengel and I put together a proposal[1] for a new feature in GHC. The basic idea is pretty simple: provide a new pragma that could be used like so: error :: String -> a errorLoc :: IO Location -> String -> a {-# REWRITE_WITH_LOCATION error errorLoc #-} Then all usages of `error` would be converted into calls to `errorLoc` by the compiler, passing in the location information of where the call originated from. Our three intended use cases are: * Locations for failing test cases in a test framework * Locations for log messages * assert/error/undefined Note that the current behavior of the assert function[2] already includes this kind of approach, but it is a special case hard-coded into the compiler. This proposal essentially generalizes that behavior and makes it available for all functions, whether included with GHC or user-defined. The proposal spells out some details of this approach, and contrasts with other methods being used today for the same purpose, such as TH and CPP. Michael [1] https://github.com/sol/rewrite-with-location [2] http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/base/4.6.0.1/doc/html/Control-E…

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Combining databases from packages installed with cabal install
by Marco Túlio Pimenta Gontijo 20 Jan '14

20 Jan '14

Hi. I'm configuring haddock via cabal install (see [0]) to build the hoogle database. The database is being installed in ~/.cabal/share/doc/$package-$version/html/$package.txt, but is not being combined with the default database. That is, if right after the installation I try to search with the hoogle command for some a function, it will not work. I wrote the following script, which I called cabal-install: #!/bin/sh set -e set -x cabal \ install \ --enable-documentation \ --enable-library-profiling \ --haddock-hyperlink-source \ --haddock-hoogle \ --haddock-html \ "$@" cd ~/.cabal/share/hoogle-4.2.13/databases/ for file in ~/.cabal/share/doc/*/html/*.txt do hoo=`echo $file | sed 's/.txt$/.hoo/;s#.*/##'` if [ ! -f $hoo ] then hoogle convert $file $hoo || true hoogle combine default.hoo $hoo -o /tmp/cabal-install-$$.hoo mv /tmp/cabal-install-$$.hoo default.hoo fi done Basically, it searches for .txt hoogle databases installed that were not combined yet with the default database, and combines them. I think it would be good if this was the default behaviour of cabal install when called with --haddock-hoogle. Is this a bug? Greetings. 0: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/hackage/ticket/517 -- marcot http://marcot.eti.br/

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hdbc-odbc not getting any data using mssql stored procedure
by grant 10 Oct '13

10 Oct '13

Hi, I am trying to call a stored procedure (exec gp_somestoredproc 123,22) using microsoft sql server 2008 R2 using hdbc-odbc. Here is the haskell code: import Database.HDBC import Database.HDBC.ODBC import Control.Monad import Data.Maybe import qualified Data.ByteString.Char8 as B test1 = do c <- connectODBC "Driver={SQL Server};Server=?;Database=?;uid=sa;pwd=?;" p <- prepare c "exec gp_somestoredproc 123,22" -- returns no data -- p <- prepare c "exec [sys].sp_datatype_info_100 0,@ODBCVer=4;exec gp_somestoredproc 123,22" -- all is good e <- execute p [] -- returns 6 (number of rows) putStrLn $ "execute " ++ show e r <- fetchAllRows' p putStrLn $ "fetchAllRows' " ++ show r The problem is that this code returns the number of rows correctly but doesn't return data nor are there any errors. However, I ran a perl program using perl dbi and got the data correctly. Here is the perl code: #!/usr/bin/perl use DBI; my $user = 'sa'; my $pw = '????'; my $dsn = '????'; my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:ODBC:$dsn", $user, $pw, {PrintError => 1, RaiseError => 1}); if (!$dbh) { print "error: connection: $DBI::err\n$DBI::errstr\n$DBI::state\n"; } my $type_info = $dbh->type_info(93); while(my($key, $value) = each(%$type_info)){ print "$key => $value\n"; }; my $sql = "exec gp_somestoredproc 123,22"; my $sth = $dbh->prepare($sql); my $r = $sth->execute; while (my ($db) = $sth->fetchrow_array) { print $db . "\n===\n"; } $dbh->disconnect if $dbh; I traced both versions and noticed that the perl dbi version first called exec [sys].sp_datatype_info_100 0,@ODBCVer=4 So I prefixed the stored proc call in haskell with "exec [sys].sp_datatype_info_100 0,@ODBCVer=4;" and it worked fine. In short: FAILS p <- prepare c "exec gp_somestoredproc 123,22" -- returns number of rows but no data WORKS p <- prepare c "exec [sys].sp_datatype_info_100 0,@ODBCVer=4;exec gp_somestoredproc 123,22" I have no idea why this works. sp_datatype_info_100 just dumps out the fields types ... More information: The stored procedure returns data with user defined field types. I have managed to do selects against tables with user defined field types without any problems using hdbc-odbc. I couldn't emulate this error on a local older version of mssql server (Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP1) - 10.0.2531.0 (X64) express) but the perl dbi prefixed the stored procedure call with "exec sp_datatype_info 0,@ODBCVer=3" I am running this against Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 (RTM) - 10.50.1797.0 (X64) I would appreciate any pointers you can give me. Thanks Grant

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Roshask
by Tijn van der Zant 02 Oct '13

02 Oct '13

Hi, I want to use Haskell to program my robot using ros. I've found roshask https://github.com/acowley/roshask and I was wondering if someone on this list has experience with it and can tell me how good it is. Thanx! --Tijn

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An APL library for Haskell
by Simon Peyton-Jones 16 Sep '13

16 Sep '13

Friends Many of you will know the array language APL<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29>. It focuses on arrays and in particular has a rich, carefully-thought-out array algebra. An obvious idea is: what would a Haskell library that embodies APL's array algebra look like? In conversation with John Scholes and some of his colleagues in the APL community a group of us developed some ideas for a possible API, which you can find on the Haskell wiki here: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/APL However, we have all gone our separate ways, and I think it's entirely possible that that the idea will go no further. So this message is to ask: * Is anyone interested in an APL-style array library in Haskell? * If so, would you like to lead the process of developing the API? I think there are quite a few people who would be willing to contribute, including some core gurus from the APL community: John Scholes, Arthur Whitney, and Roger Hui. Simon

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] [Haskell] Spam on the Haskell wiki
by Henk-Jan van Tuyl 03 Aug '13

03 Aug '13

On Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:03:49 +0200, Henk-Jan van Tuyl <hjgtuyl(a)chello.nl> wrote: > > I am willing to do administrator tasks. > >> 4. ReCAPTCHA enabled for 'edits adding new, unrecognized external >> links' - which is all of the spam. > > This is already enabled. The HaskellWiki is still flooded with spam; we should take some measure to reduce the stream severely. Most spam seems to be created (semi-)automated; the pages do not contain links, the usernames end with two digits, most of the time. Some cures I have thought up: - Verify new wiki accounts, before granting them rights, based on e-mails in the Haskell mailing lists (or subscription of a Haskell mailing list) - Let new users only change pages, not create new pages - Block creation of usernames o ending with two or more digits o with more than one x or q o starting with "buy" o longer than 20 characters o with more than 4 consonants in a row - Block creation of pages with words in a certain list (Coach, Vuitton, Chanel, handbags, purses, outlet, luggage, "Nike Air Jordan") Regards, Henk-Jan van Tuyl -- http://Van.Tuyl.eu/ http://members.chello.nl/hjgtuyl/tourdemonad.html Haskell programming --

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Categories (cont.)
by Christopher Howard 08 May '13

08 May '13

I've perhaps been trying everyones patiences with my noobish CT questions, but if you'll bear with me a little longer: I happened to notice that there is in fact a Category class in Haskell base, in Control.Category: quote: -------- class Category cat where A class for categories. id and (.) must form a monoid. Methods id :: cat a a the identity morphism (.) :: cat b c -> cat a b -> cat a c morphism composition -------- However, the documentation lists only two instances of Category, functions (->) and Kleisli Monad. For instruction purposes, could someone show me an example or two of how to make instances of this class, perhaps for a few of the common types? My initial thoughts were something like so: code: -------- instance Category Integer where id = 1 (.) = (*) -- and instance Category [a] where id = [] (.) = (++) ------- But these lead to kind mis-matches. -- frigidcode.com

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