Here's some haskell to update a particular field in a data structure (the below run in a StateT / ErrorT context):
set_track_width :: (UiStateMonad m) => Block.ViewId -> Int -> Block.Width -> m () set_track_width view_id tracknum width = do view <- get_view view_id track_views <- modify_at (Block.view_tracks view) tracknum $ \tview -> tview { Block.track_view_width = width } update_view view_id (view { Block.view_tracks = track_views })
Plus some utilities:
modify_at xs i f = case post of [] -> throw $ "can't replace index " ++ show i ++ " of list with length " ++ show (length xs) (elt:rest) -> return (pre ++ f elt : rest) where (pre, post) = splitAt i xs
update_view view_id view = modify $ \st -> st { state_views = Map.adjust (const view) view_id (state_views st) }
A similar imperative update would look something like this:
state.get_view(view_id).tracks[tracknum].width = width
Has there been any work on improving update syntax in haskell? Possibly some improvement could be made with a typeclass or two and a few custom operators, to unify some of the disparate syntax. Maybe more improvement could be made with some TH hackery. A better record update syntax I'm sure could improve things even more. Or maybe there's a way to structure existing code to improve the above? Does anyone know of work that's been done on analysing functional update syntax issues, and coming up with something concise and clear? Other functional languages that do this better? It seems like an obvious candidate for improvement. Probably not an easy one though. There are various overlapping issues: monadic binds not mixing easily with non-monadic functions, different data structures (maps, lists, ...) having different update functions, record update syntax being super wordy, and probably some other things I'm not thinking of. As an aside, on the record system side, I would love to see one of the proposed record systems implemented in GHC, whether it be trex or the "lighter weight" version proposed by one of the Simons. Does anyone know what the main hangup is? Unresolved issues in the proposal? No consensus? Backward incompatibility? Not enough interested GHC devs? All I can say is that as a heavy user of (.) I wouldn't mind replacing them all with (#) or (@) or whatever if I got a nicer record syntax. It wouldn't be hard to write a search/replace for (.).