Is there something similar for parsing config files?
If you write one I most certainly will use it! ;)
You (we) can already start using the cmdargs package to parse config files. Upon my feature request to add a function to the cmdargs package that allows to add default arguments, Neil pointed out that the function System.Environment.withArgs can be used to get the same effect without changes to the cmdargs package. Here is a complete example: {-# LANGUAGE DeriveDataTypeable #-} import System.Environment import System.Console.CmdArgs data Conf = Conf { option :: Bool } deriving (Show,Data,Typeable) myConf = mode $ Conf { option = enum False [True,False] } main = print =<< getConfig "my.conf" "My Program v0.0" myConf getConfig configFileName welcomeMsg modeDesc = do originalArgs <- getArgs argsFromFile <- words `fmap` readFile configFileName withArgs (argsFromFile ++ originalArgs) (cmdArgs welcomeMsg [modeDesc]) If you save the String '--true' in the file 'my.conf', this program reads the config from the file and prints it: # runhaskell typed-config.hs Conf {option = True} You can overwrite the default behaviour with command line arguments: # runhaskell typed-config.hs --false Conf {option = False} After parsing a config file into command-line arguments, the parsing of the typed `Config` comes for free. Sebastian P.S.: Instead of the `words` function one would use some smarter function that translates real config files into command-line arguments, but the fez-conf package (which provides such functionality) segfaults on my computer. Depending on how one specifies the mode value, one may not be able to overwrite default options. For example, the usual translation of the boolean field above is a single flag --option that can be present or absent. I did not find a way to unset a set flag other than declaring it as an enum flag. This could be improved if flags without arguments would support optional arguments like '--option=yes/no' or similar. (Btw. the documentation of enum seems wrong, the given example does not typecheck). -- Underestimating the novelty of the future is a time-honored tradition. (D.G.)