- Haskell-Cafe - Haskell.org

ANNOUNCE: smallcheck-1.0
by Roman Cheplyaka 22 Feb '13

22 Feb '13

I am glad to announce a new major release of SmallCheck, a property-based testing library for Haskell. The major changes in this release are documented here: http://ro-che.info/articles/2013-02-19-smallcheck.html Roman

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Is the haksell-pkg-janitors group on github alive?
by Jan Stolarek 22 Feb '13

22 Feb '13

Does anyone know if haksell-pkg-janitors group on github is alive? I've submitted a pull request a week ago but no response so far. Janek

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GHC panicking when using -fext-core -O2
by Christian Gosch 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

Hi Cafe, when I try to create core files with the above options, ghc panics with this message: ghc: panic! (the 'impossible' happened) (GHC version 7.6.2 for x86_64-unknown-linux): make_exp (App _ (Coercion _)) Please report this as a GHC bug: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug I tried this with 7.4.1 and with 7.6.2. Does anyone have an idea why this could happen, without looking at the code I am trying to compile? Thanks for any hint, Christian

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websockets client
by Stephen Olsen 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

Are there any good websockets client libraries for haskell. I've been searching for one but can only come up with server implementations.

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Re: [Haskell-cafe] generalized, tail-recursive left fold that can finish tne computation prematurely
by oleg＠okmij.org 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

As others have pointed out, _in principle_, foldr is not at all deficient. We can, for example, express foldl via foldr. Moreover, we can express head, tail, take, drop and even zipWith through foldr. That is, the entire list processing library can be written in terms of foldr: http://okmij.org/ftp/Algorithms.html#zip-folds That said, to express foldl via foldr, we need a higher-order fold. There are various problems with higher-order folds, related to the cost of building closures. The problems are especially severe in strict languages or strict contexts. Indeed, foldl_via_foldr f z l = foldr (\e a z -> a (f z e)) id l z first constructs the closure and then applies it to z. The closure has the same structure as the list -- it is isomorphic to the list. However, the closure representation of a list takes typically quite more space than the list. So, in strict languages, expressing foldl via foldr is a really bad idea. It won't work for big lists. BTW, this is why foldM is _left_ fold. The arguments against higher-order folds as a `big hammer' were made back in 1998 by Gibbons and Jones http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.42.1735 So, the left-fold with the early termination has a good justification. In fact, this is how Iteratees were first presented, at the DEFUN08 tutorial (part of the ICFP2008 conference). The idea of left fold with early termination is much older though. For example, Takusen (a database access framework) has been using it since 2003 or so. For a bit of history, see http://okmij.org/ftp/Streams.html#fold-stream

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ANNOUNCE: mcpi-0.0.0.2 (The MineCraft-Pi API in Haskell)
by Doug Burke 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

I have released versions 0.0.0.1 and 0.0.0.2 (the latter being documentation improvements but it hasn't yet been built) of mcpi: http://hackage.haskell.org/package/mcpi https://github.com/DougBurke/hmcpi It is a very simple, and very incomplete, interface to MineCraft: Pi edition http://pi.minecraft.net/ Now I just need to find out how to get ghc 7.4.2 on my Raspberry Pi (oops, I mean the Raspberry Pi I told my wife I bought as a Christmas gift for the kids) so that I can use this from ghci. Any comments and improvements are more than welcome, Doug

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Unused definitions across modules in a package
by Felipe Almeida Lessa 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

Hey! GHC warns me about unused definitions in a module. However, is it possible to warn me about unused definitions in a package? For example, suppose that module A exports function f and that module B uses A.f (everything on a single package). However, after some time B stops using A.f. Is there a way of receiving a warning saying that "A exports f but no other module uses it."? (I know that this warning wouldn't be useful for libraries, since their whole point is to export things.) Cheers! -- Felipe.

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Fwd: How to input Unicode string in Haskell program?
by Semyon Kholodnov 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Semyon Kholodnov <joker.vd(a)gmail.com> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:26:58 +0400 Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] How to input Unicode string in Haskell program? To: Alexander V Vershilov <alexander.vershilov(a)gmail.com> I know that this problem doesn't exist on Linux. But I work on Windows. And I use WinGHCi primarily, because it has RTF component in it which shows Unicode. But it turns out WinGHCi merely sends commands and receives results to/from ghci.exe. And it does it in a weird way: it sets ghci's console code pages to current system codepages (ACP), reads results from ghci as ACP, but sends commands to it as UTF8. Which got interpreted as ACP. Now, however, I have a fix for WinGHCi: in StartGHCI.c one should replace SetConsoleOutputCP(GetACP()); SetConsoleCP(GetACP()); with SetConsoleOutputCP(CP_UTF8); SetConsoleCP(CP_UTF8); and in Utf8.c, in UnicodeToLocalCodePage() body, "WideCharToMultiByte( CP_ACP" has to be replaced with "WideCharToMultiByte( CP_UTF8", and in LocalCodePageToUnicode() body, "MultiByteToWideChar( CP_ACP" has to be replaced with "MultiByteToWideChar( CP_UTF8". After recompiling, everything works great: Prelude> x <- getLine résumé 履歴書 резюме Prelude> putStrLn x résumé 履歴書 резюме Prelude> Is there any way to ask for this fix to be included in WinGHCi and Haskell Platform? 2013/2/21, Alexander V Vershilov <alexander.vershilov(a)gmail.com>: > The problem is that Prelude.getLine uses current locale to load characters: > for example if you have utf8 locale, then everything works out of the box: > >> $ runhaskell 1.hs >> résumé 履歴書 резюме >> résumé 履歴書 резюме > > But if you change locale you'll have error: > >> LANG="C" runhaskell 1.hs >> résumé 履歴書 резюме >> 1.hs: <stdin>: hGetLine: invalid argument (invalid byte sequence) > > To force haskell use UTF8 you can load string as byte sequence and convert > it to UTF-8 > charecters for example by > > import qualified Data.ByteString as S > import qualified Data.Text.Encoding as T > > main = do > x <- fmap T.decodeUtf8 S.getLine > > now code will work even with different locale, and you'll load UTF8 from > shell > independenty of user input's there > > -- > Alexander > > > On 21 February 2013 13:58, Semyon Kholodnov <joker.vd(a)gmail.com> wrote: > >> Imagine we have this simple program: >> >> module Main(main) where >> >> main = do >> x <- getLine >> putStrLn x >> >> Now I want to run it somehow, enter "résumé 履歴書 резюме" and see this >> string printed back as "résumé 履歴書 резюме". Now, the first problem is >> that my computer runs Windows, which means that I can't use ghci >> ":main" or result of "ghc main.hs" to enter such an outrageous string >> — Windows console is locked to one specific local code page, and no >> codepage contains Latin-1, Cyrillic and Kanji symbols at the same >> time. >> >> But there is also WinGHCi. So I do ":main", copy-paste this string >> into the window (It works! Because Windows has Unicode for 20 years >> now), but the output is all messed up. In a rather curious way, >> actually: the input string is converted to UTF-8 byte string, and its >> bytes are treated as being characters from my local code page. >> >> So, it appears that I have no way to enter Unicode strings into my >> Haskell programs by hands, I should read them from files. That's sad, >> and I refuse to think I am the first one with such a problem, so I >> assume there is a solution/workaround. Now would someone please tell >> me this solution? Except from "Just stick to 127 letters of ASCII", of >> course. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Haskell-Cafe mailing list >> Haskell-Cafe(a)haskell.org >> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe >> > > > > -- > Alexander >

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PhD Studentship in Nottingham
by Graham Hutton 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

Dear all, The School of Computer Science at the University of Nottingham is currently advertising a PhD position on applying functional programming techniques to optimisation problems: http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ajp/PhD-opportunities.htm This would be a great position for someone who is interested in applying FP ideas to real-world problems. The closing date for applications is 28th February 2013. If you have any queries about the position, please contact Andrew Parkes <andrew.parkes(a)nottingham.ac.uk>. Best wishes, Graham -- Prof Graham Hutton Functional Programming Lab School of Computer Science University of Nottingham, UK http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

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Embedded haskell?
by Mike Meyer 21 Feb '13

21 Feb '13

I've been working with open source rc aircraft transmitter software, and in looking at the shortcomings of one of them, started thinking about embedding a language. There are a number of options that can work here, like FORTH or a basic. But then I realized that Haskell - or similar functional language - could well be a good fit. The software is meant to let the end user express how the various inputs - joysticks, switches, trims, knobs - are mapped to values the radio sends on the various control channels. All the key values are immutable - you either read them from hardware once in the process of building a frame to transmit, or you fill them into a frame and transmit it, then start over for the next frame. You just need to let the end user express the functions to go from one to the other. The other restraint is that you need to be able to change the code in the field, with the only computer available being the embedded one. You might have a touch-screen, or you might just have cursor keys. Either way, actually inputting a program could be interesting. Similarly, the entire system: compiler, interpreter, whatever - needs to run on the embedded computer. A quick google turns up Hume, which seems to be designed for this kind of thing, though not with the "in the field" restrictions. Anyone have any other suggestions of software that might fit here? Experience with any of that software? Other suggestions? Thanks, <mike

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