Dear Haskellers This is gonna be my first post on here : ) . I am developing some tools to interact with Chemistry packages, and I basically have to write input files for those programs. I would like to be able to write those input in a better way inside the hs code. For example this would be perfect ( {{{+ and +}}} are just labels to mark the "special syntax"): --------------a.hs-------------------------------- main = do writeFile "inputOfChemPack" string string = {{{+ This is the actual input file Formatted like this with some %variable +}}} variable = "foo" -------------------------------------------------- I have written a parser that is reading the code and outputs a file like this (it can handle special characters and variables that are not strings, but let's keep it simple here): ----------------b.hs------------------------------ main = do writeFile "inputOfChemPack" string string = "This is the actual input file\nFormatted like this\nwith some " ++ variable ++ " " variable = "foo" -------------------------------------------------- Now... this file can be compiled and it does exactly what I want: it prints a file like this: --------inputOfChemPack----- This is the actual input file Formatted like this with some foo -------------------------------------- Now the big question... right now I am doing this with some bash scripts (run the parser on the file and then compile its output)... but... is it possible to automatize this using my parser as a sort of preprocessor? the "dream" would be to make an extension that just applies the parser automatically before compilation, such as: -----------------a.hs----------------------------- {-# extensionName #-} main = do writeFile "inputOfChemPack" string string = {{{+ This is the actual input file Formatted like this with some %variable +}}} variable = "foo" -------------------------------------------------- $ ghci a.hs GHCi, version 7.6.3: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ :? for help Loading package ghc-prim ... linking ... done. Loading package integer-gmp ... linking ... done. Loading package base ... linking ... done. [1 of 1] Compiling Main ( a.hs, interpreted ) Ok, modules loaded: Main. *Main> string "This is the actual input file\nFormatted like this\nwith some foo" I have been browsing stuffs about quasiquotation and preprocessors, but I have the feeling that is a quite simple task compared to those solutions. Any ideas? How can I solve this problem? Thank you Alessio