August 2013 - Haskell-Cafe

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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HTML framework for web-ui
by Vlatko Basic 01 Oct '13

01 Oct '13

Hi, I'd like to start using web pages as the UI for apps. I found out for yesod, snapp and happstack as the candidates. Would you recommend any of them as better for app ui (not "classical" web pages)? Or maybe another one? thanks, vlatko

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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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sequence causing stack overflow on pretty small lists
by Niklas Hambüchen 06 Sep '13

06 Sep '13

On #haskell we recently had a discussion about the following: import System.Random list <- replicateM 1000000 randomIO :: IO [Int] I would think that this gives us a list of a million random Ints. In fact, this is what happens in ghci. But with ghc we get: Stack space overflow: current size 8388608 bytes. Use `+RTS -Ksize -RTS' to increase it. This is because sequence is implemented as sequence (m:ms) = do x <- m xs <- sequence ms return (x:xs) and uses stack space when used on some [IO a]. >From a theoretical side, this is an implementation detail. From the software engineering side this disastrous because the code is * obviously correct by itself * the first thing people would come up with * not exaggerating: a million elements is not much * used a lot of places: mapM, replicateM are *everywhere* and yet it will kill our programs, crash our airplanes, and give no helpful information where the problem occurred. Effectively, sequence is a partial function. (Note: We are not trying to obtain a lazy list of random numbers, use any kind of streaming or the likes. We want the list in memory and use it.) We noticed that this problem did not happen if sequence were implemented with a difference list. What do you think about this? Should we "fix" functions like this, probably trading off a small performance hit, or accept that idiomatic Haskell code can crash at any time?

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Performance of delete-and-return-last-element
by Lucas Paul 05 Sep '13

05 Sep '13

Suppose I need to get an element from a data structure, and also modify the data structure. For example, I might need to get and delete the last element of a list: darle xs = ((last xs), (rmlast xs)) where rmlast [_] = [] rmlast (y:ys) = y:(rmlast ys) There are probably other and better ways to write rmlast, but I want to focus on the fact that darle here, for lack of a better name off the top of my head, appears to traverse the list twice. Once to get the element, and once to remove it to produce a new list. This seems bad. Especially for large data structures, I don't want to be traversing twice to do what ought to be one operation. To fix it, I might be tempted to write something like: darle' [a] = (a, []) darle' (x:xs) = let (a, ys) = darle' xs in (a, (x:ys)) But this version has lost its elegance. It was also kind of harder to come up with, and for more complex data structures (like the binary search tree) the simpler expression is really desirable. Can a really smart compiler transform/optimize the first definition into something that traverses the data structure only once? Can GHC? - Lucas

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Haskell / Functional Programmers Group in Madrid (Spain)?
by Alejandro Serrano Mena 04 Sep '13

04 Sep '13

Hi, Is there any Haskell or functional programmers user group in the region of Madrid? If not, I think it could be a great idea to get to know each other, and share experiences. Furthermore, we could try to organize some meetings with presentations, hackatons and so on (my personal ambition is to be able to organize another "ekmett Workshop" as the Japanese one - http://comonad.com/reader/2013/japanese-workshop-1/) I know there is some locations along Madrid dedicated to open source promotion, like http://madridonrails.com/, and which we could use for these meetings. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you! PS: Maybe a bare "Haskell" group is not big enough (at least according to Haskellers.com) but a "functional programmers" one may well be.

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On Markdown in Haddock and why it's not going to happen
by Mateusz Kowalczyk 03 Sep '13

03 Sep '13

Greetings café, Perhaps some saddening news for Markdown fans out there. As you might remember, there was a fair amount of push for having Markdown as an alternate syntax for Haddock. Unfortunately, this is probably not going to happen for reasons listed on the post I just published at [1]. This thread is meant to be for discussion about the post as many people, myself included, felt that Markdown would be a nice thing to have. I feel like I covered the topic fairly well on the post but feel free to give suggestions or ask questions. I would also like to remind you that if there's something that you'd like to see in Haddock or something that you feel is broken, a good way express this is to make a ticket on the Haddock Trac[2]. I will close the relevant Markdown ticket on the Trac[3] in about 3 days, unless someone can come up with a reasonable solution that meets the initial intent of this part of the project: a widely known markup format that could be used as an alternate syntax for Haddock so that it's possible to write the documentation without learning the vanilla syntax itself. [1]: http://fuuzetsu.co.uk/blog/posts/2013-08-30-why-Markdown-in-Haddock-can't-happen.html [2]: http://trac.haskell.org/haddock [3]: http://trac.haskell.org/haddock/ticket/244 -- Mateusz K.

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ANN: th-desugar simplifies Template Haskell processing
by Richard Eisenberg 02 Sep '13

02 Sep '13

I've just uploaded my new th-desugar package, which enables easier processing of Template Haskell source syntax by desugaring it into a much simpler core language. The meaning of the code after desugaring is identical to before desugaring, but the syntax is much simpler. To wit, th-desugar simplifies out all of the following constructs: - guarded expressions in both functions and case statements - "where" declarations - do syntax - list/monad comprehensions - record creation / updates - as patterns - non-trivial patterns in a lambda expression - lambda-case - multi-way if - several more If you are writing a library that manipulates Template Haskell syntax, you may wish to consider if th-desugar will make your job easier by forcing you to consider fewer cases. The one source Haskell construct supported by Template Haskell but not supported by th-desguar is view patterns, mostly because these interact quite non-trivially with pattern binders. It's possible this hole will be closed in a future version. Enjoy! Richard

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Proposal: Polymorphic typeclass and Records
by Wvv 01 Sep '13

01 Sep '13

Let we have data in one module as this: data Person = Person { personId :: Int, name :: String } data Address a = Address { personId :: Int, address :: String , way :: a} It was discussed a lot in topics "OverloadedRecordFields" This is an alternative: Let we have polymorphic typeclass: class Record{f} a b | a -> b where f :: a -> b so, compiler could create instances for our data as: instance Record{personId} Person Int where personId (Person x _) = x instance Record{personId} (Address a) Int where personId (Address x _ _) = x instance Record{way} (Address Int) Int where way (Address _ _ x) = x and we could use this: p:: Record {personId} r Int => r -> Int p = personId What do you think about this? -- View this message in context: http://haskell.1045720.n5.nabble.com/Proposal-Polymorphic-typeclass-and-Rec… Sent from the Haskell - Haskell-Cafe mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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