Haskell: Handling resulting Either from computations - haskell

I have revisited Haskell lateley and constructed a toy programming language parser/interpreter. Using Parsec for lexing and parsing and a separate interpreter. I'm running in to some issues with feeding the result from the parser to my interpreter and handle the potential error from both the interpreter and parser. I end up with something like this:
main = do
fname <- getArgs
input <- readFile (head fname)
case lparse (head fname) input of
Left msg -> putStrLn $ show msg
Right p -> case intrp p of
Left msg -> putStrLn $ show msg
Right r -> putStrLn $ show r
This dosn't look pretty at all. My problem is that lparse returns Either ParseError [(String, Stmt)] and itrp returns the type Either ItrpError Stmt so I'm having a real hard time feeding the Right result from the parser to the interpreter and at the same time bail and print the possible ParseError or IntrpError.
The closest to what i want is something like this
main = do
fname <- getArgs
input <- readFile (head fname)
let prog = lparse (head fname) input
(putStrLn . show) (intrp <$> prog)
But this will not surprisingly yield a nested Either and not print pretty either.
So are there any nice Haskell ideomatic way of doing this threading results from one computation to another and handling errors (Lefts) in a nice way without nesting cases?
Edit
adding types of lparse and itrp
lparse :: Text.Parsec.Pos.SourceName -> String -> Either Text.Parsec.Error.ParseError [([Char], Stmt)]
intrp :: [([Char], Stmt)] -> Either IntrpError Stmt

While not perfect, I'd create a helper function for embedding any Showable error from Either into MonadError:
{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-}
import Control.Monad.Except
strErr :: (MonadError String m, Show e) => Either e a -> m a
strErr = either (throwError . show) return
Then if you have a computation that can fail with errors, like
someFn :: ExceptT String IO ()
someFn = strErr (Left 42)
you can run it (printing errors to stdout) as
main :: IO ()
main = runExceptT someFn >>= either putStrLn return
In your case it'd be something like
main = either putStrLn return <=< runExceptT $ do
fname <- liftIO getArgs
input <- liftIO $ readFile (head fname)
prog <- strErr $ lparse (head fname) input
r <- strErr $ interp prog
print r

Well, if you want to chain successful computations, you can always use >>= to do that. For instance in your case:
lparse (head fname) input >>= intrp
And if you want to print out either your error message you can use the either class that takes two handler functions, one for the case when you have Left a (error in your case) and another for Right b (in your case a successful thing). An example:
either (putStrLn . show) (putStrLn . show) (lparse (head fname) input >>= intrp)
And if anything fails in your chain (any step of your monadic chain becomes Left a) it stops and can for instance print out the error message in the above case.

Related

How to use Do notation with both Maybe and IO

I am trying to get a good grip on the do notation in Haskell.
I could use it with Maybe and then print the result. Like this:
maybeAdd :: Maybe Integer
maybeAdd = do one <- maybe1
two <- maybe2
three <- maybe3
return (one + two + three)
main :: IO ()
main = putStr (show $ fromMaybe 0 maybeAdd)
But instead of having a separate function I am trying to use the do notation with the Maybe inside the main function. But I am not having any luck. The various attempts I tried include:
main :: IO ()
main = do one <- maybe1
two <- maybe2
three <- maybe3
putStr (show $ fromMaybe 0 $ return (one + two + three))
main :: IO ()
main = do one <- maybe1
two <- maybe2
three <- maybe3
putStr (show $ fromMaybe 0 $ Just (one + two + three))
main :: IO ()
main = do one <- maybe1
two <- maybe2
three <- maybe3
putStr (show $ (one + two + three))
All of these leads to various types of compilation errors, which unfortunately I failed to decipher to get the correct way to do it.
How do I achieve the above? And perhaps maybe an explanation of why the approaches I tried were wrong also?
Each do block must work within a single monad. If you want to use multiple monads, you could use multiple do blocks. Trying to adapt your code:
main :: IO ()
main = do -- IO block
let x = do -- Maybe block
one <- maybe1
two <- maybe2
three <- maybe3
return (one + two + three)
putStr (show $ fromMaybe 0 x)
You could even use
main = do -- IO block
putStr $ show $ fromMaybe 0 $ do -- Maybe block
one <- maybe1
two <- maybe2
three <- maybe3
return (one + two + three)
-- other IO actions here
but it could be less readable in certain cases.
The MaybeT monad transformer would come handy in this particular case. MaybeT monad transformer is just a type defined something like;
newtype MaybeT m a = MaybeT {runMaybeT :: m (Maybe a)}
Actually transformers like MaybeT, StateT etc, are readily available in Control.Monad.Trans.Maybe, Control.Monad.Trans.State... For illustration purposes it' Monad instance could be something like shown below;
instance Monad m => Monad (MaybeT m) where
return = MaybeT . return . Just
x >>= f = MaybeT $ runMaybeT x >>= g
where
g Nothing = return Nothing
g (Just x) = runMaybeT $ f x
so as you will notice the monadic f function takes a value that resides in the Maybe monad which itself is in another monad (IO in our case). The f function does it's thing and wraps the result back into MaybeT m a.
Also there is a MonadTrans class where you can have some common functionalities those are used by the transformer types. One such is lift which is used to lift the value into a transformer according to that particular instance's definition. For MaybeT it should look like
instance MonadTrans MaybeT where
lift = MaybeT . (liftM Just)
Lets perform your task with monad transformers.
addInts :: MaybeT IO ()
addInts = do
lift $ putStrLn "Enter two integers.."
i <- lift getLine
guard $ test i
j <- lift getLine
guard $ test j
lift . print $ (read i :: Int) + (read j :: Int)
where
test = and . (map isDigit)
So when called like
λ> runMaybeT addInts
Enter two integers..
1453
1571
3024
Just ()
The catch is, since a monad transformer is also a member of Monad typeclass, one can nest them indefinitelly and still do things under a singe do notation.
Edit: answer gets downvoted but it is unclear to me why. If there is something wrong with the approach please care to elaborate me so that it helps people including me to learn something better.
Taking the opportunity of being on the edit session, i would like to add a better code since i think Char based testing might not be the best idea as it will not take negative Ints into account. So let's try using readMaybe from the Text.Read package while we are doing things with the Maybe type.
import Control.Monad.Trans.Maybe
import Control.Monad.Trans.Class (lift)
import Text.Read (readMaybe)
addInts :: MaybeT IO ()
addInts = do
lift $ putStrLn "Enter two integers.."
i <- lift getLine
MaybeT $ return (readMaybe i :: Maybe Int)
j <- lift getLine
MaybeT $ return (readMaybe j :: Maybe Int)
lift . print $ (read i :: Int) + (read j :: Int)
I guess now it works better...
λ> runMaybeT addInts
Enter two integers..
-400
500
100
Just ()
λ> runMaybeT addInts
Enter two integers..
Not an Integer
Nothing

Haskell caught directory not exist but not empty value

With the LambdaCase I am able to filter out if a dir does not exist. However: if a user is prompted and hits enter (empty) I still get an exception.
I think Maybe or Either can help me here, but I have a hard time figuring out how to set this up.
{-# LANGUAGE LambdaCase #-}
import System.Directory
import System.IO
dirExist = do
a <- prompt "Directory:> "
doesDirectoryExist a >>= \case
True -> getDirContent a
_ -> putStrLn "Directory does not exist or invalid value specified."
getDirContent :: FilePath -> IO ()
getDirContent dir = do
result <- getDirectoryContents dir
mapM_ putStrLn $ result
prompt :: String -> IO String
prompt x = do
putStr x
a <- getLine
return a
The problem is that doesDirectoryExist "" returns True, but whatever is in your getDirContent function (which you'll need to post if you want a more detailed answer) doesn't work when passed "".
There's no need for Maybe or Either to fix it. Just wrap the block in an if construct, and put something like putStrLn "You must enter a directory name" in the else.
You can replace the line:
doesDirectoryExist a >>= \case
with:
((&&) <$> (pure $ not $ null a) <*> doesDirectoryExist a) >>= \case
This is called "applicative style" (in case you didn't know it ;-)); I am combining two IO operations that return a boolean using the AND (&&) operator.
The (pure $ not $ null a) expression checks that the string isn't empty, and uses "pure" to lift a pure operation into an IO (so we can combine it with doesDirectoryExist into an expression that checks for both conditions).
EDIT:
As Joseph noted, the above executes doesDirectoryExist whether it is needed or not; you usually want to avoid that (unless you somehow rely on its side effects); you can avoid it with bradrn's suggestion; you can also do this:
(if null a then pure False else doesDirectoryExist a) >>= \case
Alternatively, since you dislike if-then-else notation (as do I):
(case null a of True -> pure False; False -> doesDirectoryExist a) >>= \case
Not really cleaner, though; you can import Data.Bool and do this:
-- import Data.Bool
(bool (doesDirectoryExist a) (pure False) $ null a) >>= \case
("bool" is just a more functional-like notation for the good old if-then-else)

Handling exceptions (ExceptT) in chain of actions

I am trying to use an exception to skip parts of the code here. Instead of getting caught by catcheE and resuming normal behavior all following actions in the mapM_ chain get skipped.
I looked at this question and it appears that catchE ~ main and checkMaybe ~ intercept.
I also checked the implementation of mapM_to be sure it does what i want it to, but i don't understand how the Left value can escape dlAsset to affect the behavior of mapM_.
I refactored this from a version where i simply used an empty string as an exception marker for the failed lookup. In that version checkMaybe just returned a Right value immediately and it worked (matching on "" to 'catch')
import Data.HashMap.Strict as HM hiding (map)
import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy as BS
import qualified Data.ByteString.Char8 as BSC8
import qualified JSONParser as P -- my module
retrieveAssets :: (Text -> Text) -> ExceptT Text IO ()
retrieveAssets withName = withManager $ (lift ((HM.keys . P.assets)
<$> P.raw) ) >>= mapM_ f
where
f = \x -> dlAsset x "0.1246" (withName x)
dlAsset :: Text -> Text -> Text -> ReaderT Manager (ExceptT Text IO) ()
dlAsset name size dest = do
req <- lift $ (P.assetLookup name size <$> P.raw) >>= checkMaybe
name >>= parseUrl . unpack -- lookup of a url
res <- httpLbs req
lift $ (liftIO $ BS.writeFile (unpack dest) $ responseBody res)
`catchE` (\_ -> return ()) -- always a Right value?
where
checkMaybe name a = case a of
Nothing -> ExceptT $ fmap Left $ do
BSC8.appendFile "./resources/images/missingFiles.txt" $
BSC8.pack $ (unpack name) ++ "\n"
putStrLn $ "lookup of " ++ (unpack name) ++ " failed"
return name
Just x -> lift $ pure x
(had to reformat to become somewhat readable here)
edit: i'd like to understand what actually happens here, that would probably help me more than knowing which part of the code is wrong.
The problem is that your call to catchE only covered the very last line of dlAsset. It needs to be moved to the left of the do-notation indentation level to cover all of the do notation.

How to "break" IO action in haskell

I want to have the "return" (in imperative language) function in haskell.
E.g.
main = do
let a = 10
print a
-- return this function
print $ a + 1
How can I achieve this?
You can emulate this to some extent using Exceptions,
{-# LANGUAGE DeriveDataTypeable #-}
import Control.Exception
import Data.Typeable
data MyException = MyException deriving (Show, Typeable)
instance Exception MyException
main = handle (\ MyException -> return ()) $ do
let a = 10 :: Int
print a
throwIO MyException
print $ a + 1 -- never gets executed
You can also do it with the ContT or ErrorT monad transformers, although they can a bit unwieldly.
First, let me start by warning that trying to translate imperative constructs into Haskell will likely lead to code which is not idiomatic, hard to write, and hard to read. Just because you can simulate some constructs by using a few monad transformers, it does not mean that this should actually be done.
That being said, here's an example of early return using Control.Monad.Cont.ContT. The code below simulates an imperative return inside a few for loops.
As Rufflewind warns, this can get unwieldy. The type of callCC alone (not shown below) can be quite puzzling.
import Control.Monad.Cont
search :: Int -> IO (Maybe (Int,Int))
search x = runContT (callCC go) return
where go earlyReturn = do
forM_ [10..50] $ \i -> do
lift $ putStrLn $ "Trying i=" ++ show i
forM_ [10..50] $ \j -> do
lift $ putStrLn $ "Trying j=" ++ show j
when (i * j == x) $ do
lift $ putStrLn $ "Found " ++ show (i,j)
earlyReturn $ Just (i,j)
return Nothing

Haskell calculator

Here is my new main with the error: parse error on input '->'
I commented where the error is. Could it be an indentation error somewhere?
main :: IO()
main = do
expression <- evaluate_input
putStrLn $ show $ compute expression
evaluate_input :: IO ()
evaluate_input = do
args <- getArgs
case args of
a:s -> return a
-> do putStrLn "Enter Expression or 'end' to exit calculator"
hFlush stdout
getLine
unless (expression -> "end") $ showExpr expression --error here
where
showExpr expression = do putStrLn $ evaluateExpr expression
evaluate_input
evaluateExpr :: String -> String
evaluateExpr = show
Few problems with your code
until is not used correctly. I find it better to recurse when I have to repeat same action again and again. You can write the monadic version of until and use that.
It is better to use getArgs inside main once. You don't need to repeat it every time.
A corrected version is here. I haven't implemented all the functions so you still need to do the hard work of parsing and evaluating expressions.
import Control.Monad (unless)
main :: IO ()
main = evaluate
evaluate :: IO ()
evaluate = do
putStrLn "Enter Expression"
expr <- getLine
unless (expr == "end") $ showExpr expr
where
showExpr expr = do putStrLn $ evaluateExpr expr
evaluate
evaluateExpr :: String -> String
evaluateExpr = show

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