At 13:12 14/12/03 +0100, Max Hoffmann wrote:

Dear Haskell cafe members, I am somebody one could well call a bloody beginner but the elegance of functional programming and am therefore truly interested to learn more about Haskell.

Now I have an assignment to write a parsing function to convert a string of a mathematical expression into a tree in UPN style to evaluate it afterwards. So my evaluating function looks like this:

data Op = Plus|Minus|Times|Div|Fac deriving(Show,Eq) data OpTree = Term OpTree Op OpTree |Number Float |E deriving(Show,Eq) eval(Number z) = z eval(Term li op re) |op == Plus= (eval li) + (eval re) |op == Minus= (eval li) - (eval re) |op == Times= (eval li) * (eval re) |op == Div= (eval li) / (eval re)

And I tried to write a parsing function but I got stuck in the very beginning. So far I wrote:

--parsing parsing :: String->[OpTree] parsing (a:b:c:xs) t |isDigit b = ((parsing xs)) ((Term (read a) c (read b)):t)

And the Hugs compiler gives me so many error messages, that I have no clue how to get rid of this mess. Could anybody give me a hint where my error is and whether I am right in the general direction.

It's almost clear from the parsing type signature what you hope to achieve, but I can't really figure what you're trying to do in the code. So I offer a couple of indirect suggestions: (1) are you sure you want parsing :: String->[OpTree] and not: parsing :: String->OpTree (i.e. why a *list* of OpTrees?) (2) pick and code a really simple case first, and then figure out how to generalize it. I've found this approach has helped me in coding some complex algorithms. E.g. to parse 2+2, the following is based on your code and yields the expected result under Hugs: [[ import Data.Char data Op = Plus|Minus|Times|Div|Fac deriving(Show,Eq) data OpTree = Term OpTree Op OpTree |Number Float |E deriving(Show,Eq) eval:: OpTree -> Float eval(Number z) = z eval(Term li op re) |op == Plus= (eval li) + (eval re) |op == Minus= (eval li) - (eval re) |op == Times= (eval li) * (eval re) |op == Div= (eval li) / (eval re) --parsing parsing :: String->OpTree parsing (a:'+':c:"") | isDigit a && isDigit c = Term (Number (read [a])) Plus (Number (read [c])) test1 = eval (parsing "2+2") -- 4.0 ]] That's far from what you need to achieve, but it's maybe a toe-hold on the way. (3) To handle the issue of parsing a construct consisting of a sequence of things from a string, look at the prelude function lex (in PreludeText), and type ReadS, so see how they deal with: (a) parsing a value from the front of a string, and return both the value and the remainder of the string, and (b) the fact that parsing is not, in general, deterministic: at any point in the process there may be more than one possible way to continue the parse. Hint: uses a list to return all possible parses.) HTH. #g ------------ Graham Klyne For email: http://www.ninebynine.org/#Contact