[Haskell-cafe] GetOpt

26 Apr 2006

      Hi all,

I just started to study Haskell and it is my almost first big experience 
with functional languages (except Emacs Lisp and Python). I enjoyed all 
small exercises and started a bigger business writing a general utility. 
However, I have a problem from the beginning. The utility get some file 
and convert it to another format. It is a kind of small compiler. It 
also accepts many parameters and behaves depending on them. The problem 
is how to do this neat! How should I write my program to accept and 
neatly work with options????

Please, could you suggest an example of code how to do this properly in 
Haskell. No book or tutorial discuss this topic. It is really sad 
because the problem is very unclear. Indeed, what I do in C. I make a 
struct settings and set its fields. Then, the program uses this 
parameters easily. However, what can I do in Haskell? I imagine the 
program as a composite function that take some input and produce the output.

I decided that now I should consider my program options as an additional 
variable(s) of the input. Well, it is still hard to implement.

Below is an example of what I did first. However, it is just not enough 
and looks ugly for me. Please, HELP!!!:

-------------------------CODE IS BELOW-------------------------

module Main where

-- std
import System.IO
import System.Console.GetOpt
import System.Environment ( getArgs )
import System.Exit

import Char

-- data
import Data.Maybe ( fromMaybe )

-- local

-- main program: options, maybe in file >> out file
main :: IO ()
main = do
       -- program info
       genInfo

       -- options processing
       args <- getArgs
       case check_filter args of
                (WrongOpts,strLst) -> usage ("Error: Wrong option list\n"
                                      ++ (concat strLst))
                                      >> exitWith (ExitFailure 1)
                (ForHelp,strLst) -> usage []
                                    >> exitWith ExitSuccess
                (ForVersion,strLst) -> version
                                       >> exitWith ExitSuccess

                --strLst contains 3 strings: input file name, output, 
and parameters
                (OK,strLst) -> do
                               inputstr <- readFile infile               
--get the content
                               writeFile outfile (pgnjs inputstr params) 
--write the result
                               exitWith ExitSuccess                      
--exit
                               where infile  = (strLst !! 0)
                                     outfile = (strLst !! 1)
                                     params  = (strLst !! 2)
                --(_,_) -> version >> exitWith (ExitFailure (-1))

---------------- OPTIONS DESCRIPTION ----------------

-- OptionFlag is
data OptionFlag = Version | Help | Output String | Input String
                  deriving (Show, Eq)

-- description of all options
options :: [OptDescr OptionFlag]
options =
    [ Option ['h', '?'] ["help"]    (NoArg Help)    ("show this help"),
      Option ['V']      ["version"] (NoArg Version) ("show version number"),
      Option ['i']      ["input"]   (ReqArg Input "file") ("input file 
name"),
      Option ['o']      ["output"]  (ReqArg Output "file") ("output file 
name")
    ]

------------------------------------------------------

-- this data describes the result of program work    
data ErrKey = OK | ForHelp | ForVersion | WrongOpts
              deriving (Show, Eq)

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------
-- input is a string of options and output is the result of the
-- program. Actually, this is only a filter which filter all
-- exceptional situation in option lists and then call a real function
-- if list is good
check_filter :: [String] -> ( ErrKey, [String] )
check_filter args =
    case (getOpt Permute options args) of
             (os, [], [])  ->
               if (elem Help os) then (ForHelp,[])
               else if (elem Version os) then (ForVersion, [])
               else if (not ((elem "-i" args) && (elem "-o" args)) )
                    then (WrongOpts, ["both -i and -o must be specified\n"])
                    -- we filtered now all exceptional situation
               else (OK, ["in.tmp","out.tmp",[]])
             (os, fs, ers) -> (WrongOpts, [])

-------------- OPTIONS EXCEPTIONAL FUNCTIONS -----------------

-- Version info
version :: IO ()
version = putStrLn $ "Version 0.1.1a of October-November 2005"

-- Usage short info: Output error line and usage
usage :: String -> IO ()
usage errLine = putStr $
                errLine ++ (usageInfo "Usage: shipgnjs [option...]" options)

-- General info string
genInfo :: IO ()
genInfo = putStrLn "shipgnjs (c) 2005 Anton Kulchitsky"

{- This is the main function that operates on correct string: input:
the first element is input pgn, the second line are parameters the
output is html text for the result file -}

pgnjs :: String -> String -> String
pgnjs pgnstr params = map toUpper pgnstr

----

Thank you in advance,

Anton Kulchitsky (a.k.a. atoku)