Hello I am new at Haskell and i'm having problems trying to get this script to work. This script reads in arguements from a command line and find them in a seperate text file.
E.G: cat.txt | ./redact house big cat (in compiler)
It redacts certain words in a text file by replacing them with stars (**)asterisks. The number of stars used for each redacted word should equal the number of characters in the word.
module Main where
import System
import Data.Char
import Data.List
lowercase :: String -> String
lowercase = map toLower
main = do
arg1 <- getArgs
txt <- getContents
putStr (redact txt arg1)
redact :: String -> String -> String
redact input xWords = unlines [ work line | line <- lines input ]
where work line = unwords [ foo word | word <- words line ]
foo w | lowercase(w) == lowercase(xWords) = convertWord w 1
| otherwise = w
convertWord Eq a => [a] -> [a]
convertWord = map (const '*')
However, when i try to compile this, GHCi returns the error:
redact.hs:13:38:
Couldn't match expected thye 'Char' with actual type '[Char]'
Expected type: String
Actual type: [String]
In the second argument of 'redact', namely 'arg1'
In the first of 'putStr', namely '<redact txt arg1>'
Failed, module loaded: none.
So the code:
putStr (redact txt arg1)
is causing the problem.
Thank you in advance for any help and if you can improve the code in anyway that would be great.
EDIT:
I want to enter as many args as possible, it doesnt matter how many args you enter, i tried:
(arg1:arg2:arg3:arg4:arg5:_) <- getArgs
but I have to enter EXACT 5 args, It shouldn't matter how many args I enter.
I was thinking of using some kind of loop but I am not sure?
Again thank you for your help.
To get it to work with multiple arguments, use getArgs as you have it. The problem lies with
foo w | lowercase(w) == lowercase(xWords) = convertWord w 1
| otherwise = w
where you compare the lowercase of one word to lowercase of multiple words. The latter is not defined, you'd like to compare it to the lowercase of each of the xWords. So first you need to bring them all to lowercase, that's most efficiently done by calling from main redact txt (map lowercase arg1) rather than just redact txt arg1. Then you need to determine if a read word is in the list xWords, that's what the elem function is there for.
foo w | lowercase w `elem` xWords = convertWord w 1
| otherwise = w
BTW, you should maybe not call this function foo even if it's only a local one.
getArgs :: IO [String], so after arg1 <- getArgs, arg1 has the type [String]: it contains all the arguments passed to your program, as a list. But you're using it as String, thus the error: GHC expected arg1 to be a String, but it's a [String].
You can pattern-match on the result like this:
arg1:_ <- getArgs
This results in arg1 containing the first element of the list, and discards the rest of the list. If you don't pass an argument, it'll result in a runtime error. Of course, if you want more specialised behaviour (say, printing an error when no arguments are given), you could use a more complex method of extracting the first argument, such as a case expression.
As far as improvements to your program go:
You can simplify the definition of work using function composition and map rather than the list comprehension: work = unwords . map foo . words (read: "map foo over all the elements of the words, then unwords them").
redact can be simplified similarly, to redact input xWords = unlines . map work . lines $ input.
lowercase(w) is better written as lowercase w.
But your program looks basically fine to me, apart from some oddities (like the missing :: in convertWord's type signature, the additional 1 you pass to it in foo — but going by the somewhat erratic indentation, I guess you edited the code before posting it). I wouldn't make the first two changes unless you understand how they work and are comfortable writing code like that.
Related
Can anyone tell me what is the problem with this Haskell program
import Control.Monad
import Data.Char
main = do
contents <- getContents
putStrLn $ contents
putStr $ "shortLinesOnly version is " ++ (shortLinesOnly contents)
putStr $ "printOnlyLessChars version is " ++ (printOnlyLessChars contents)
shortLinesOnly :: String -> String
shortLinesOnly input =
let allLines = lines input
shortLines = filter (\line -> length line < 10) allLines
result = unlines shortLines
in result
--------------------the other way of doing this is -----------------
printOnlyLessChars contents = unlines $ filter (\a -> length a < 10) $ lines $ contents
The program works fine, but it fails when I try to print the contents (line 5). Why is it having problems printing the string via putStrLn
The error message I get is
* Couldn't match expected type `(String -> IO ())
-> t0 -> IO String'
with actual type `IO String'
* The function `getContents' is applied to one argument,
but its type `IO String' has none
In the expression: getContents putStrLn
Thanks,
This is the line that you need to focus on:
In the expression: getContents putStrLn
This is haskell showing you how it views your code, but your code doesn't look like that. This is almost always an indentation error. Check that you don't have an extra space or a tab where it doesn't belong.
As a suggestion when reading haskell type error messages there are three places to look, and you should scan all of them before fixating on a single one:
The type signature information -- do your types really match?
The expression information -- does the expression the compiler sees match your expectations, or do you need to add $ or parens
Is there a typo or indentation problem.
I frequently feel my brain starting to overheat as I try to read through a really messy Couldn't match expected type so before I get too upset over trying to read that part of the error message I carefully check the In the expression: part to make sure that there is an easy to fix issue with how I entered the code.
I want to read an input like 12 34 56 into three integers using Haskell.
For a single integer, one might use myInteger <- readLn. But for this case, I have not found any solution, except the one of first reading a line, then replacing all spaces with ,, (using something like:
spaceToCommas str =
let repl ' ' = ','
repl c = c
in map repl str
) and then calling read '[' ++ str ++ ']' which feels very hackish. Also, it does not allow me to state that I want to read three integers, it will attempt to read any amount of integers from stdin.
There has to be a better way.
Note that I would like a solution that does not rely on external packages. Using e.g. Parsec is of course great, but this simple example should not require the use of a full-fledged Parser Combinator framework, right?
What about converting the string like:
convert :: Read a => String -> [a]
convert = map read . words
words splits the given string into a list of strings (the "words") and then we perform a read on every element using map.
and for instance use it like:
main = do
line <- getLine
let [a,b,c] = convert line :: [Int] in putStrLn (show (c,a,b))
or if you for instance want to read the first three elements and don't care about the rest (yes this apparently requires super-creativity skills):
main = do
line <- getLine
let (a:b:c:_) = convert line :: [Int] in putStrLn (show (c,a,b))
I here returned a tuple that is rotated one place to the right to show parsing is done.
im trying to make a programm that should read line by line from a file and check if its a palindrom, if it is, then print.
I'm really new to haskell so the only thing i could do is just print out each line, with this code :
main :: IO()
main = do
filecontent <- readFile "palindrom.txt"
mapM_ putStrLn (lines filecontent)
isPalindrom w = w==reverse w
The thing is, i dont know how to go line by line and check if the line is a palindrom ( note that in my file, each line contains only one word). Thanks for any help.
Here is one suggested approach
main :: IO()
main = do
filecontent <- readFile "palindrom.txt"
putStrLn (unlines $ filter isPalindrome $ lines filecontent)
isPalindrome w = w==reverse w
The part in parens is pure code, it has type String->String. It is generally a good idea to isolate pure code as much as possible, because that code tends to be the easiest to reason about, and often is more easily reusable.
You can think of data as flowing from right to left in that section, broken apart by the ($) operators. First you split the content into separate lines, then filter only the palindromes, finally rebuild the full output as a string. Also, because Haskell is lazy, even though it looks like it is treating the input as a single String in memory, it actually is only pulling the data as needed.
Edited to add extra info....
OK, so the heart of the soln is the pure portion:
unlines $ filter isPalindrome $ lines filecontent
The way that ($) works is by evaluating the function to the right, then using that as the input of the stuff on the left. In this case, filecontent is the full input from the file (a String, including newline chars), and the output is STDOUT (also a full string including newline chars).
Let's follow sample input through this process, "abcba\n1234\nK"
unlines $ filter isPalindrome $ lines "abcba\n1234\nK"
First, lines will break this into an array of lines
unlines $ filter isPalindrome ["abcba", "1234", "K"]
Note that the output of lines is being fed into the input for filter.
So, what does filter do? Notice its type
filter :: (a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a]
This takes 2 input params, the first is a function (which isPalendrome is), the second a list of items. It will test each item in the list using the function, and its output is the same list input, minus items that the function has chosen to remove (returned False on). In our case, the first and third items are in fact palendromes, the second not. Our expression evaluates as follows
unlines ["abcba", "K"]
Finally, unlines is the opposite of lines.... It will concatinate the items again, inserting newlines in between.
"abcba\nK"
Since STDIO itself is a String, this is ready for outputting.
Note that is it perfectly OK to output a list of Strings using non-pure functions, as follows
forM ["1", "2", "3"] $ \item -> do
putStrLn item
This method however mixes pure and impure code, and is considered slightly less idiomatic Haskell code than the former. You will still see this type of thing a lot though!
Have a look at the filter function. You may not want to put all processing on a single line, but use a let expression. Also, your indentation is off:
main :: IO ()
main = do
filecontent <- readFile "palindrom.txt"
let selected = filter ... filecontent
...
I’m new to Haskell and have a problem with interact function. This is my sample program:
main :: IO ()
main = interact inputLength
inputLength :: String -> String
inputLength input = show $ length input
It compiles but when running doesn’t print the output - just prints the string that is passed to it and moves to the next line. When I pass the interact another String -> String function like this:
upperCase :: String -> String
upperCase input = map toUpper input
it runs ok and prints the argument in uppercase as expected – so what is wrong with the first function?
The String -> String argument given to interact should take a string containing all the input and return a string containing all the output. The reason you see output after pressing enter with interact (map toUpper) is because map toUpper acts lazily -- it can start giving output before all the input is known. Finding the length of a string is not like this -- the whole string must be known before any output can be produced.
You need to either signal an EOF to say that you are done entering input (in the console, this is Control-D on Unix/Mac systems, I believe it's Control-Z on Windows), then it will give you the length. Or you can find the length of each line by saying so:
interact (unlines . map inputLength . lines)
This will always be lazy in each line, so you know you can get one output after each input.
Since acting on lines is such a common pattern, I like to define a little helper function:
eachLine :: (String -> String) -> (String -> String)
eachLine f = unlines . map f . lines
Then you can do:
main = interact (eachLine inputLength)
A more reusable solution:
main = interactLineByLine processLine
-- this wrapper does the boring thing of mapping, unlining etc.... you have to do all the times for user interaction
interactLineByLine:: (String -> String) -> IO ()
interactLineByLine f = interact (unlines . (map processLine) . lines)
-- this function does the actual work line by line, i.e. what is
-- really desired most of the times
processLine:: String -> String
processLine line = "<" ++ line ++ ">"
How do I get a search match from a list of strings in Haskell?
module Main
where
import List
import IO
import Monad
getLines = liftM lines . readFile
main = do
putStrLn "Please enter your name: "
name <- getLine
list <- getLines "list.txt"
-- mapM_ putStrLn list -- this part is to list out the input of lists
The first thing to do, the all-important first principle, is to get as much of the thinking out of main or out of IO as possible. main should where possible contain all the IO and maybe nothing but IO decorated with pure terms you define elsewhere in the module. Your getLines is mixing them unnecessarily.
So, to get that out of the way, we should have a main that is something like
main =
do putStrLn "What is your name?"
name <- getContents
names <- readFile "names.txt"
putStrLn (frankJ name names)
-- or maybe the more austere segregation of IO from all else that we get from:
main =
do putStrLn greeting
name <- getContents
names <- readFile nameFile
putStrLn (frankJ name names)
together with the 'pure' terms:
greeting, nameFile :: String
greeting = "What is your name?"
nameFile = "names.txt"
Either way, we are now really in Haskell-land: the problem is now to figure out what the pure function:
frankJ :: String -> String -> String
should be.
We might start with a simple matching function: we get a match when the first string appears on a list of strings:
match :: String -> [String] -> Bool
match name namelist = name `elem` namelist
-- pretty clever, that!
or we might want to normalize a bit, so that white space at the beginning and end of the name we are given and the names on the list doesn't affect the match. Here's a rather shabby way to do that:
clean :: String -> String
clean = reverse . omitSpaces . reverse . omitSpaces
where omitSpaces = dropWhile (== ' ')
Then we can improve on our old match, i.e. elem:
matchClean :: String -> [String] -> Bool
matchClean name namelist = match (clean name) (map clean namelist)
Now we need to follow the types, figuring out how to fit the type of, say, matchClean:: String -> [String] -> Bool with that of frankJ :: String -> String -> String. We want to fit it inside our definition of frankJ.
Thus, to 'provide input' for matchClean, we need a function to take us from a long string with newlines to the list of stings (the names) that matchClean needs: that's the Prelude function lines.
But we also need to decide what to do with the Bool that matchClean yields as value; frankJ, as we have it, returns a String. Let us continue with simple-minded decomposition of the problem:
response :: Bool -> String
response False = "We're sorry, your name does not appear on the list, please leave."
response True = "Hey, you're on the A-list, welcome!"
Now we have materials we can compose into a reasonable candidate for the function frankJ :: String -> String -> String that we are feeding into our IO machine defined in main:
frankJ name nametext = response (matchClean name (lines nametext))
-- or maybe the fancier:
-- frankJ name = response . matchClean name . lines
-- given a name, this
-- - pipes the nametext through the lines function, splitting it,
-- - decides whether the given name matches, and then
-- - calculates the 'response' string
So here, almost everything is a matter of pure functions, and it is easy to see how to emend things for further refinement. For example, maybe the name entered and the lines of the text file should be further normalized. Internals spaces should be restricted to one space, before the comparison. Or maybe there is a comma in lines on the list since people are listed as "lastname, firstname", etc. etc. Or maybe we want the response function to use the person's name:
personalResponse :: String -> Bool -> String
personalResponse name False = name ++ " is a loser, as far as I can tell, get out!"
personalResponse name True = "Ah, our old friend " ++ name ++ "! Welcome!"
together with
frankJpersonal name = personalResponse name . matchClean name . lines
Of course there are a million ways of going about this. For example, there are regex libraries. The excellent and simple Data.List.Split from Hackage might also be of use, but I'm not sure it can be used by Hugs, which you might be using.
I note that you are using old-fashioned names for the imported modules. What I have written uses only the Prelude so imports are unnecessary, but the other modules are now called "System.IO", "Data.List" and "Control.Monad" in accordance with the hierarhical naming system. I wonder if you are using an old tutorial or manual. Maybe the pleasant 'Learn You a Haskell' site would be better? He affirms he's using ghc but I think that won't affect much.
If you wan't a list of all lines in your list.txt that contain the name,
you can simply use
filter (isInfixOf name) list
but I'm not sure if I understood your question correct.