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ANNOUNCE: Sifflet 2.3.0 - recursion learning aid / visual programming language
by gdweber＠iue.edu 19 May '16

19 May '16

Sifflet 2.3.0 is now available on Hackage. This release brings Sifflet up to date, so it compiles with GHC 7.10.3, newer versions of depended-on libraries, and builds in a cabal sandbox. Sifflet is the visual, functional programming language and support system for students learning about recursion. Sifflet programmers define functions by drawing diagrams, and the Sifflet interpreter uses the diagrams to show how function calls are evaluated. The Sifflet library (formerly sifflet-lib package) is reintegrated into, and deprecated in favor of, the sifflet package. A test suite is added. Personal Note ------------- It's been about 18 months since I've been able to work on this project or do any serious Haskell development. A lot has changed in the Haskell world -- a lot of catching up to do! It feels good getting back to Haskell again. About Sifflet ------------- Sifflet is a visual, functional programming language intended as an aid for learning about recursion. * A picture explains Sifflet better than words: please see the screenshot showing how to evaluate 3!: http://pages.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/home.html * Features: - Visual editor. - Visual tracer/debugger which shows how recursive and other function calls are evaluated. To support active learning and avoid screen clutter, Sifflet displays only as much of the computation as the user requests. - Carefully crafted tutorial with 44 pictures, about 26 pages if printed. - Number, string, and list data types. - Small collection of primitive functions. - Runnable examples of compound functions. - Sifflet functions can be exported to Scheme, Python 3, and Haskell. References ---------- * Download: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/sifflet * Home page: http://pages.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/home.html * Sifflet Tutorial: http://pages.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/doc/tutorial.html * Change log: http://pages.iu.edu/~gdweber/software/sifflet/ChangeLog.html -- Gregory D. Weber, Ph. D. http://pages.iu.edu/~gdweber/ Associate Professor of Informatics Tel (765) 973-8420 Indiana University East FAX (765) 973-8550

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How about a special syntax for generalised (= MonadPlus) comprehension?
by Alexey Muranov 19 May '16

19 May '16

If i understand correctly, the main reason that generalised comprehension was removed from Haskell 98 must have been that its syntax "collides" with the syntax for lists. Indeed, if ``` [x^2 | x <- msum (map return [0..10]), x `mod` 2 == 1] ``` is made ad-hoc polymorphic, then so probably should `[]` and `[1,2,3]`. Moreover, for consistency, the meaning of `[]` as the list type constructor (like in `[]Int` or `[Int]`), should probably be changed to denote an arbitrary instance of `MonadPlus` :). My question is: why not to have a special syntax for `MonadPlus` comprehension? For example: ``` {| x + y | x <- Just 1, y <- Just 2 |} ``` or ``` [* x + y | x <- Just 1, y <- Just 2 *] ``` Then matching analogs of `[]` and `[1,2,3]` could be made: ``` {||} :: Maybe Int -- Nothing {| Just 1, Just 2, Just 3 |} :: Maybe Int -- Just 1 ``` Alexey.

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ANNOUNCE: Haskell Communities and Activities Report (30th ed., May 2016)
by Mihai Maruseac 19 May '16

19 May '16

On behalf of all the contributors, we are pleased to announce that the Haskell Communities and Activities Report (30th edition, May 2016) is now available, in PDF and HTML formats: http://haskell.org/communities/05-2016/report.pdf http://haskell.org/communities/05-2016/html/report.html All previous editions of HCAR can be accessed on the wiki at https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell_Communities_and_Activities_Report Many thanks go to all the people that contributed to this report, both directly, by sending in descriptions, and indirectly, by doing all the interesting things that are reported. We hope you will find it as interesting a read as we did. If you have not encountered the Haskell Communities and Activities Reports before, you may like to know that the first of these reports was published in November 2001. Their goal is to improve the communication between the increasingly diverse groups, projects, and individuals working on, with, or inspired by Haskell. The idea behind these reports is simple: Every six months, a call goes out to all of you enjoying Haskell to contribute brief summaries of your own area of work. Many of you respond (eagerly, unprompted, and sometimes in time for the actual deadline) to the call. The editors collect all the contributions into a single report and feed that back to the community. When we try for the next update, six months from now, you might want to report on your own work, project, research area or group as well. So, please put the following into your diaries now: ======================================== End of September 2016: target deadline for contributions to the November 2016 edition of the HCAR Report ======================================== Unfortunately, many Haskellers working on interesting projects are so busy with their work that they seem to have lost the time to follow the Haskell related mailing lists and newsgroups, and have trouble even finding time to report on their work. If you are a member, user or friend of a project so burdened, please find someone willing to make time to report and ask them to "register" with the editors for a simple e-mail reminder in November (you could point us to them as well, and we can then politely ask if they want to contribute, but it might work better if you do the initial asking). Of course, they will still have to find the ten to fifteen minutes to draw up their report, but maybe we can increase our coverage of all that is going on in the community. Feel free to circulate this announcement further in order to reach people who might otherwise not see it. Enjoy! -- Mihai Maruseac (MM) "If you can't solve a problem, then there's an easier problem you can solve: find it." -- George Polya

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Is there a way to query the availability of an extension? Or could we?
by David Feuer 17 May '16

17 May '16

We have __GLASGOW_HASKELL__ to tell us what GHC version we're running (if we're running GHC), and Cabal sets up MIN_VERSION_blah macros and (when applicable) the __HADDOCK_VERSION__ macro. But what if we're running some other compiler? It seems rather painful to have to write code that enables or disables various extensions based on what version N of compiler C happens to support. Not to mention that this is even a pain when just dealing with GHC, since it involves digging through release notes or waiting to see how Travis throws up. Is there some better way? If not, could we add one? __Have_ScopedTypeVariables__ could tell us if the ScopedTypeVariables extension is available. Then instead of saying "We need ScopedTypeVariables" when we can (painfully) do without, we can just use it precisely when we have it.

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All combinations in order.
by Christian Brolin 17 May '16

17 May '16

Hmm, I tried to post this via google groups but it was rejected. So I try to mail the list instead. Sorry for any duplicates. Hi list! How to transform a list of streams of elements into a stream of lists of elements such that all combinations of exactly one element of each input stream is present? I.e. something like this: | |type Streama =[a] |tr ::[Streame]->Stream[e] tr = sequence | But I want the order of the output lists so the ones with early elements come first. The above starts with the first elements from each stream but does not treat the streams fairly. All the elements of the last stream are used before the next element of the second last stream is used, i.e. | > tr [[1..3], [1..2], [1..3]] [[1,1,1],[1,1,2],[1,1,3],[1,2,1]..... | I don't want the third element of one stream before I have seen all the combinations of the first two elements of each stream and so on. In this case I want something like this: | [[1,1,1], [1,1,2], [1,2,1], [2,1,1], [1,2,2], [2,1,2], [2,2,1], [2,2,2], [1,1,3].... | Also [2,1,1] comes before [1,2,2] because the former contains two first element and one second element while the latter contains only one first element and two second elements. The number of streams are fairly low but the sequences can be very long (almost infinte :) and I want the first results without having to go though a full stream. Also the streams may vary in length so one stream may ran out of elements before the others. If that happens, the non-empty streams should contrbute fairly with new elements, i.e: | > sequence_ $ map print $ tr [[1..2], [3..5]] -- two times three equals to six combinations [1,3] -- 1: first and first [1,4] -- 2: first and second [2,3] -- 3: second and first [2,4] -- 4: second and second [1,5] -- 5: first and third [2,5] -- 6: second and third | Note, I'm not just interested to handle infinite streams (nor infinite number of streams) using some diagonal algorithm. I have looked at the Omega library. But it doesn't return the combinations in wanted order. If someone still wonder about the output ordering, the following program may help: | importData.List(sort,sortBy) type Streama =[a] tr ::Orde =>[Streame]->Stream[e] tr =sortBy myOrder .sequence wheremyOrder ::Orde =>[e]->[e]->Ordering myOrder xs ys =compare (reverse $ sort xs)(reverse $ sort ys) main =sequence_ $ map print$ tr [[1..3],[1..2],[1..3],[1..4]] | But this of course is not a valid solution since it inspects every combinations before producing any output. Attached the sample output.

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representing institutions in haskell
by rick 16 May '16

16 May '16

Has anyone here taken an interest in representing institutions [1] in Haskell? Institutions originated in work on CLEAR [2] which was the first algebraic specification language with rigorous semantics. Institutions take some time to explain, or unravel if you follow the reference, but they come with a convenient slogan : "Truth is invariant under change of notation." The stretch goal of institutions is transforming logics while preserving satisfaction. They are conceived in terms of categorical abstractions, so it's natural to represent them in categories. I hope some folks here find institutions a useful domain to apply their work on categories. I've attached two samples in Haskell that uses some standard libraries : Arrow, Monad, Category and Dual. The first sample, ri-0, outlines the essentials. The category of signatures, constructions in the categories, signature morphisms, sentences, models and the satisfaction condition. Using plain old Nat reduces the complexity of the exposition. I provide a constructive witness for satisfaction of the morphism from conjunction to disjunction. You may recognize that I borrow some Bird/Hinze notation on Functors like mapSign. And you find some experiments with Quickcheck and Yampa. Ri-0 runs from main, but just computes the witness to the satisfaction condition. The second sample, ri-1, builds on ri-0. Rather than Nat, I use Either to inject disjunction into the exposition. The exposition becomes more complex, but the increased complexity is justified because maintaining satisfaction under change on notation is central to institutions. The functions prodSum takes conjunction to disjunction and sumProd takes disjunction to conjunction. I owe a citation to @BartoszMilewski and his work on categories for programmers where I first saw these functions. The satisfaction condition and witness appear more complex in ri-1, but its really just the substitution of the signature morphism on product and sum rather than plain old Nat as in ri-0. I also plan a better write up, but before I do I expect to learn much from an email exchange with interested folks here. Thanks for taking a look at this material. 1. https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~goguen/pps/ins.ps 2. http://hopl.info/showlanguage.prx?exp=945 -- Rick

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[Final CFP] Haskell 2016
by Geoffrey Mainland 16 May '16

16 May '16

======================================================================== ACM SIGPLAN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Haskell Symposium 2016 Nara, Japan, 22-23 September 2016, directly after ICFP http://www.haskell.org/haskell-symposium/2016 ======================================================================== The ACM SIGPLAN Haskell Symposium 2016 will be co-located with the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP 2016) in Nara, Japan. The Haskell Symposium aims to present original research on Haskell, discuss practical experience and future development of the language, and to promote other forms of denotative programming. Topics of interest include: * Language Design, with a focus on possible extensions and modifications of Haskell as well as critical discussions of the status quo; * Theory, such as formal semantics of the present language or future extensions, type systems, effects, metatheory, and foundations for program analysis and transformation; * Implementations, including program analysis and transformation, static and dynamic compilation for sequential, parallel, and distributed architectures, memory management, as well as foreign function and component interfaces; * Libraries, that demonstrate new ideas or techniques for functional programming in Haskell; * Tools, such as profilers, tracers, debuggers, preprocessors, and testing tools; * Applications, to scientific and symbolic computing, databases, multimedia, telecommunication, the web, and so forth; * Functional Pearls, being elegant and instructive programming examples; * Experience Reports, to document general practice and experience in education, industry, or other contexts. Papers in the latter three categories need not necessarily report original academic research results. For example, they may instead report reusable programming idioms, elegant ways to approach a problem, or practical experience that will be useful to other users, implementors, or researchers. The key criterion for such a paper is that it makes a contribution from which other Haskellers can benefit. It is not enough simply to describe a standard solution to a standard programming problem, or report on experience where you used Haskell in the standard way and achieved the result you were expecting. More advice is available via the Haskell wiki: (http://wiki.haskell.org/HaskellSymposium/ExperienceReports) Regular papers should explain their research contributions in both general and technical terms, identifying what has been accomplished, explaining why it is significant, and relating it to previous work, and to other languages where appropriate. In addition, we solicit proposals for: * System Demonstrations, based on running software rather than novel research results. These proposals should summarize the system capabilities that would be demonstrated. The proposals will be judged on whether the ensuing session is likely to be important and interesting to the Haskell community at large, whether on grounds academic or industrial, theoretical or practical, technical, social or artistic. Please contact the program chair with any questions about the relevance of a proposal. Travel Support: =============== Student attendees with accepted papers can apply for a SIGPLAN PAC grant to help cover travel expenses. PAC also offers other support, such as for child-care expenses during the meeting or for travel costs for companions of SIGPLAN members with physical disabilities, as well as for travel from locations outside of North America and Europe. For details on the PAC program, see its web page (http://pac.sigplan.org) Proceedings: ============ Accepted papers will be included in the ACM Digital Library. Authors must grant ACM publication rights upon acceptance (http://authors.acm.org/main.html) Authors are encouraged to publish auxiliary material with their paper (source code, test data, etc.); they retain copyright of auxiliary material. Accepted proposals for system demonstrations will be posted on the symposium website but not formally published in the proceedings. All accepted papers and proposals will be posted on the conference website one week before the meeting. Publication date: The official publication date of accepted papers is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work. Submission Details: =================== Submitted papers should be in portable document format (PDF), formatted using the ACM SIGPLAN style guidelines (http://www.acm.org/sigs/sigplan/authorInformation.htm) The text should be in a 9-point font in two columns. The length is restricted to 12 pages, except for "Experience Report" papers, which are restricted to 6 pages. Papers need not fill the page limit---for example, a Functional Pearl may be much shorter than 12 pages. Each paper submission must adhere to SIGPLAN's republication policy, as explained on the web. Demo proposals are limited to 2-page abstracts, in the same ACM format as papers. "Functional Pearls", "Experience Reports", and "Demo Proposals" should be marked as such with those words in the title at time of submission. The paper submission deadline and length limitations are firm. There will be no extensions, and papers violating the length limitations will be summarily rejected. Papers may be submitted at: https://icfp-haskell2016.hotcrp.com/ Submission Timetable: ===================== Early Track Regular Track System Demos ---------------- ------------------- --------------- 1st April Paper Submission 20th May Notification 6th June Abstract Submission 10th June Paper Submission 17th June Resubmission Demo Submission 8th July Notification Notification Notification 31st July Camera ready due Camera ready due Deadlines stated are valid anywhere on earth. The Haskell Symposium uses a two-track submission process so that some papers can gain early feedback. Papers can be submitted to the early track on 1st April. On 20th May, strong papers are accepted outright, and the others will be given their reviews and invited to resubmit. On 17th June, early track papers may be resubmitted and are sent back to the same reviewers. The Haskell Symposium regular track operates as in previous years. Papers accepted via the early and regular tracks are considered of equal value and will not be distinguished in the proceedings. Although all papers may be submitted to the early track, authors of functional pearls and experience reports are particularly encouraged to use this mechanism. The success of these papers depends heavily on the way they are presented, and submitting early will give the program committee a chance to provide feedback and help draw out the key ideas. Program Committee: =================== James Cheney University of Edinburgh Iavor Diatchki Galois David Duke University of Leeds Richard Eisenberg University of Pennsylvania Ken Friis Larsen University of Copenhagen Andy Gill University of Kansas Zhenjiang Hu National Institute of Informatics Ranjit Jhala UC San Diego Yukiyoshi Kameyama University of Tsukuba Geoffrey Mainland (chair) Drexel University Mary Sheeran Chalmers University of Technology David Terei Stanford Niki Vazou UC San Diego Dimitrios Vytiniotis Microsoft Research =====================================================================

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Confirmation Email for Hackage Account?
by Christopher Howard 15 May '16

15 May '16

Hi. How long does it usually take to receive the confirmation email for a hackage account registration? -- http://justonemoremathproblem.com To protect my privacy, please use PGP encryption. It's free and easy to use! My public key ID is 0x340EA95A (pgp.mit.edu)

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[ANN] process-extras-0.4.1
by David Fox 14 May '16

14 May '16

I thought I should announce the process-extras package, available from hackage <https://hackage.haskell.org/package/process-extras>. It extends the process reading functions in System.Process to allow output types ByteString and Text, both strict and lazy. It also provides a function readCreateProcessLazy that can read from processes whose output is infinite - the regular readProcess functions block until they find EOF. There are also some new usage examples in the README.md file. This package has a long history, so if you are familiar with an older version you may want to take another look. Best, David Fox

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Yesos forms and types with foreign keys
by fr33domlover 14 May '16

14 May '16

Hello, I have a question about RESTful web apps in Haskell. I'm using Yesod but I suppose the same question can apply to any other framework with type safety features. Suppose I have entities A and B defined in my Persistent model file. One of A's fields is a foreign key referring to B. Each A has its own unique B. The process of creating a new A would be: 1. Set the user a web form via GET 2. Receive for field data via POST 3. Validate the input 4. Insert a new B value to the DB, and get its ID 5. Define an A value which includes that ID as a foreign key, and insert the new A value to the DB In Yesod, If I use a form of type 'AForm A', running the form must return a complete A value. But when I runFormPost, I don't have the B entity yet so I don't have an ID for the foreign key! Ideas what I can do: - Set that field to some dummy value, and override it later when I insert the B value and get its ID - Define a 'NewA' type which has the same fields as A except for that foreign key field - Insert to the DB in the form itself. Define my form as an MForm so that I have access to Handler monad and use runDB to insert to the DB right in the form itself, i.e. form success means the DB has been updated I know little about REST common practice but afaik to allow alternative representations, e.g. a JSON API, my forms need to return entity types, e.g. A and not some partial NewA. Also my forms so far are all simple AForms which just do validation, sometimes against the DB, and never insert or delete anything. Insertion and deletetion I always do in the handlers. The dummy value may work, I already have one case where I use it, but it's ugly and requires that I rely on the specific underlying type of the key, e.g. Int64 for postgresql but could be ByteString for other backends if I ever want to change. Maybe some 'dummyKey' function could make it prettier, if at all this is a good approach. What should I do here? --fr33

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