January 2014 - Haskell-Cafe

Re: [Haskell-cafe] Records vs Tuples
by oleg＠okmij.org 14 Jan '14

14 Jan '14

Cary Cherng wrote: > What exactly is the purpose in having both records and tuples? They > seem to behave rather similarly although records do have the extra > naming of the fields that tuples don't. In SML there is really no difference: In fact, in Standard ML, tuples are simply a special case of records; for example, the type int * string * bool is the same as the type { 1 : int, 2 : string, 3 : bool }. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Standard_ML_Programming/Types In some programming languages (C, OCaml, Haskell), records, or structures, have to be declared and are not extensible. OCaml also has extensible records, which don't have to be declared and whose field names may be reused. Tuples may be thought of as `extensible' records that don't have to be declared (and HList takes this thought quite seriously). > data Rec1 = Rec1 { a :: Int, b :: Bool} > data Rec2 = Rec2 { a :: Int, b :: Bool} > foo :: Rec1 -> Bool > > Rec1 and Rec2 could be in totally different code libraries. I've read > that preventing Rec2 being used in foo is good for the type safety in > that Rec1 and Rec2 are likely intended to have semantically different > meanings and allowing interchangeability breaks this. The reason is not type safety but type inference, or the ease of it. Given > data Rec1 = Rec1 { rec1a :: Int, rec1b :: Bool} > data Rec2 = Rec2 { rec2a :: Int, rec2b :: Bool} and the term \x -> rec2a x + 1 the type checker quickly determines that x must be of a type Rec2, and the inferred type is Rec2 -> Int. With extensible records, using OCaml: # fun x -> x#rec2a + 1;; - : < rec2a : int; .. > -> int = <fun> we infer a polymorphic type. That's all nice, until we look at the OCaml type checker and see the complexity of inference. Open records bring up lots of interesting problems (e.g., variance), which interact in interesting and not yet worked out ways with other features (e.g., GADTs). Also, open records can often mask problems. For example, in Haskell \x -> rec1a x + rec2a x won't type check but the corresponding code in OCaml will -- although the programmer may have never intended a record with both fields rec1a and rec2a. OCaml community has had a lot of experience with extensible and non-extensible records (and their dual -- extensible and non-extensible variants). The conclusion seems to be that both are needed. Often a programmer does mean closed records/variants; and non-extensible forms match the programmer's intent closely and give better, and earlier, error messages.

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Records vs Tuples
by Cary Cherng 14 Jan '14

14 Jan '14

What exactly is the purpose in having both records and tuples? They seem to behave rather similarly although records do have the extra naming of the fields that tuples don't.

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OT - targeting many systems
by Marc Weber 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

I love Haskell, and it gets many things right. However eg its hard to target JS in an efficient way. Sometimes I just need a quick and dirty (somewhat typesafe) program which gets the job done - sometimes its js, sometimes a tool in console, sometimse web/client code (also smartphone applets). haxe.org comes close, but while the language is fun to use it still has some shortcomings - and sometimes I hit unexpected bugs. The real question I have is: - Haskell is cool - being lazy is cool - having OO is cool (because you can target Java/Flash/.. easily) - how to get best of all worlds? So I think about creating my own language is should look like more like a source code generator than language which contains different sub universes. The idea is to code some parts - such as a parser - in a Haskell like dialect, then reuse it in quick and dirty OO world (Java like). Of course additional targets could be just plain old C, because C++ is known to be very complex - and there are tons of legacy code which should be maintained (such as Vim) - but there is no true upstream, because coding C takes so much more time. I also just don't get why it should not be possible to write code once (such as parsing snippets or highlighting), then reuse it for Vim, Emacs, Yi, .. There is no way, you cannot merge such editors - but eventually there is a way to "code once" and compile down to elisp, C, Haskell ... Live is too short to duplicate much work .. I'm writing to this mailinglist because the knowledge in the Haskell community is incredible - and I want to know * who would join such an effort (maybe write drafts, get funded by kickstarter) * does such attempt already exist ? Languages like impredicative.com/ur, Haskell, lisp, Java, Haxe cleary also illustrate the power of "meta programming" or "source code generation at compile time", yet they all come with their own limitations, eg ur cannot create generate code which is useful outside of a web server and so on. So I feel I'm reinventing the wheel again and again - I'd like to stop this. So the goal would be trying to write "functors/code" which you can instantiate with different memeory management models, tell to target different backends etc. I love Haskell, its community and what it achieved, but somehow I feel that its only 80% of the true story getting everything done. Eg haxe already allows me to write code like such - and then compile it twice: once to create a .js file, once to create server side js/php/neko/whatsoever. class FormComponentGeoLocation { new (opts){ this.opts = opts; } function check(value){ // check with regular expression that value has lat lon numbers } #if SERVER function assignValuesFromInputs(post_data, values){ var value = post_data[opts.name]; check(value); values[opts.name] = post_data[opts.name]; } #end #if js additional client code eg use geo location apis to fill in lat/lon function assignValuesFromInputs(values); var value = post_data[opts.name]; check(value); values[opts.name] = value; } #end } So this is what I'd call modular code I can reuse which has all logic it needs. While Haskell is great I'm unsure wether it allows me to create modules by code (I know about template haskell, but that's only about adding code) - and while being lazy is a feature sometimes I'd like to be strict. (I know that people work on simplifying this) ideas/thougts/links/you'd like to join understanding whether such a goal would be reachable at all? Marc Weber

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any idea why binary isn't bulding on OSX
by Anatoly Yakovenko 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

src/Data/Binary/Get.hs:423:3: error: invalid preprocessing directive #-} ^ src/Data/Binary/Get.hs:511:53: warning: missing terminating ' character [-Winvalid-pp-token] -- host order, host endian form, for the machine you're on. On a 64 bit ^ 12 warnings and 1 error generated. Failed to install binary-0.7.1.0 cabal: Error: some packages failed to install: JuicyPixels-3.1.2 depends on binary-0.7.1.0 which failed to install. binary-0.7.1.0 failed during the building phase. The exception was: ExitFailure 1

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Structural typing of records in Haskell?
by Cary Cherng 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Are there statically typed languages that treat records with structural typing, either imperative or functional? Why should records not be structurally typed in Haskell? From what I understand, in the below foo cannot take a Rec2 even though Rec1 and Rec2 are essentially the same. data Rec1 = Rec1 { a :: Int, b :: Bool} data Rec2 = Rec2 { a :: Int, b :: Bool} foo :: Rec1 -> Bool Rec1 and Rec2 could be in totally different code libraries. I've read that preventing Rec2 being used in foo is good for the type safety in that Rec1 and Rec2 are likely intended to have semantically different meanings and allowing interchangeability breaks this. But then why is map structurally typed. map takes an argument of type a -> b and suppose some other higher order function bar also takes an argument of type a -> b. Should map instead have the below type which prevents a function of type a -> b semantically intended for bar from being accidentally used in map. newtype Mapper a b = Mapper { fn :: a -> b } map :: Mapper a b -> [a] -> [b] map _ [] = [] map f (x:xs) = (fn f) x : map f xs If there is a mechanism that prevents something of type Rec2 from accidentally being used in foo, then why shouldn't there be something analogous that prevents something of type a -> b (meant for bar) from accidentally being used in map?

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upgrading from Xcode4 to Xcode5 on Mountain Lion
by Angel Alvarez (GMAIL) 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Hi, I have pending the Xcode 4 -> 5 upgrade for a while in my mountain lion, have any of you any pointers to fixes needed in order to get Xcode 5 runnignwith the current haskell platform? from time to time I've seen people having trouble and don't know really if its recommended to upgrade on Mountain Lion... regards, Angel Alvarez (GMAIL) angeljalvarezmiguel(a)gmail.com

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High level overview of GHCi?
by Maarten Faddegon 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Dear Café, I was reading http://www.aosabook.org/en/ghc.html. Figure 5.2 gives a high level overview of the compiler passes when compiling Haskell with GHC. Is anyone aware of a similar figure that gives an overview of the passes when Haskell code is interpreted with GHCi? Thank you! Maarten Faddegon

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ANN: tree-view-0.1
by Emil Axelsson 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

tree-view is a package for rendering trees as foldable HTML and Unicode art. http://hackage.haskell.org/package/tree-view Example: *Data.Tree.View> drawTree $ Node "Add" [Node "Sub" [Node "3" [], Node "Mul" [Node "1" [], Node "2" []]], Node "4" []] Add ├╴Sub │ ├╴3 │ └╴Mul │ ├╴1 │ └╴2 └╴4 / Emil

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access programs own documentation
by Corentin Dupont 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Hi guys, I'd like to access, from within my program, the program own haddock documentation. >From the cabal autogen path file, I can access the location of the program's data file, binaries etc. (getBinDir, getLibDir, getDataDir) but not the location of the doc. How to do that? For example on my machine: datadir = "/home/kau/.cabal/share/i386-linux-ghc-7.6.3/Nomyx-0.4.1" The documentation is generated in "/home/kau/.cabal/share/doc/i386-linux-ghc-7.6.3/Nomyx-0.4.1", but it depends on the configuration. Thanks, Corentin

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Haddock - How to write formulas ?
by Peter Caspers 13 Jan '14

13 Jan '14

Hi, I am still very new to Haskell, trying to start my very first project. For its documentation I want to use Haddock and suitable comments in the source code. I notice that (e.g. different from doxygen) there is no direct way of writing formulas, say in TeX style. Looking into some projects on Hackage, formulas there seem to be written in "pseudo-code" more or less like TeX but not following any strict standard. As far as I can see. What would be your recommendations concerning this ? Is there some guideline on how to include formulas ? I understand that there is "literal programming" where you can e.g. write a TeX article with embedded code blocks that can be extracted for the compiler. However, I do not want to follow this path, also the result is a bit different from what is produced in the "traditional" approach, isn't it. Thanks a lot Peter

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