"Simon Peyton-Jones"
You probably know this, but your kind of application is a big reason that we now make GHC available as a library. (Just say 'import GHC'.)
You shouldn't need to parse Haskell yourself: just call GHC's parser. You get back a syntax tree with very precise location information that can guide your editor (e.g. if you want to select a sub-exprssion). Similarly, you can call the type checker.
Are there any small examples of using GHC's parser? I'm a complete newbie so perhaps I'm not checking all of the relevant locations for docs, but I can't seem to find this parser that is being referred to. I checked out the source tree to GHC as well, but I have no idea where to look in there (not to mention it's a bit intimidating). Pointers would be appreciated! As part of my learning experience, I think I want to see if I can write a haskell pastebin that does proper syntax highlighting. Someone in #haskell suggested that I use just a lexer because using a parser is overkill. However, I can't make this assessment until I see how to use the parser and the information it can supply. Thanks, Pete