[Haskell-beginners] Re: ghci access to .hs functions

[prad]

On Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:00:44 -0300
MAN <elviotoccalino at gmail.com> wrote:

> couple of things
> you could be interested to know.
> 
most definitely! i very much appreciate the help, el.
thx to you too brent for clearing up the ExitCode problem

> Your main will allways be 'IO ()' , but that doesn't mean you must
> sparkle 'return ()' all over the place :P
>
well i have been specializing in random programming => just keep trying
things randomly and hope it works. :D

putting return() in the "all" worked (no idea why), so i thought it
must be a good thing and put it in the other two. :D

i'd also used mapM because map didn't work and i figured it had
something to do with monads and M is the first letter in monad. :D

i really have to get away from this sort of thing and i'm trying to
figure out the excellent stuff etugrul and kyle provided in the 
= vs <- thread.

now i tried taking the returns out and things are fine for "add" and
"upd", but even with the changes you suggested for gtKys (mapM to
mapM_) i'm getting these errors:

======
gadit.hs:30:19:
    Couldn't match expected type `()' against inferred type `[()]'
      Expected type: IO ()
      Inferred type: IO [()]
    In the expression: gtKys conn
    In a case alternative: "all" -> gtKys conn

gadit.hs:66:4:
    Couldn't match expected type `[()]' against inferred type `()'
      Expected type: IO [()]
      Inferred type: IO ()
    In the expression: mapM_ (mkPag conn) kL
    In the expression:
        do { r <- quickQuery conn "SELECT key from main" [];
             let kL = concat $ map (map fromSql) r;
             mapM_ (mkPag conn) kL }
=======

it want some sort of list and i'm not providing it.

here is the code in question with the line numbers:

=======

 21 main = do
 22     args <- getArgs
 23     let act = head args
 24     conn <- connectPostgreSQL "host=localhost dbname=lohv
 user=pradmin"
 25     case act of
 26          "add"  -> do
 27              kV1 <- dbDef conn
 28              upDbs conn (fromSql kV1)
 29          "upd"  -> upDbs conn (last args)
 30          "all"  -> gtKys conn
 31          _      -> putStrLn "add, upd num, all only!!"
 32     commit conn
 33     disconnect conn
 34     putStrLn "All Done!"

...

 61 -- gtKys: gets all key values in database
 62 gtKys :: (IConnection conn) => conn -> IO [()]
 63 gtKys conn = do
 64     r <- quickQuery conn "SELECT key from main" []
 65     let kL = concat $ map (map fromSql) r
 66     mapM_ (mkPag conn) kL

========

now i got to thinking about all this and realized that gtKys really
shouldn't have 
mapM_ (mkPag conn) kL 
in there anyway because its job is to just get some key values not to
make Pages (mkPag)
in fact, i only put it in there because i couldn't figure out how to
get the stuff out - as kyle says in the other thread: 
"once something is "inside" of a monad (IO in this case), it's very
difficult, impossible, to get it out again."

so what i did is rewrite the code like this:
case act of
...
         "all"  -> do
             kyL <- gtKys conn
             mapM_ (mkPag conn) kyL

and 

gtKys conn = do
    r <- quickQuery conn "SELECT key from main" []
    return $ concat $ map (map fromSql) r

it all works now.

gtKys now has the lengthy type:
gtKys :: (IConnection conn, Data.Convertible.Base.Convertible SqlValue
a) => conn -> IO [a]

which i'm leaving out since it generates a scope error unless i import
something else (as brent explained in the above post regarding
ExitCode).

however, i still don't quite understand what the return is doing beyond
you seem to need it in order to get things out of a monad associated
function. whenever i have an IO () i seem to require it.

there seem to be several ways to ask functions to provide computations
and require specific ways to get access to them.


-- 
In friendship,
prad

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