[Haskell-beginners] A first try

[Jared Hance]

Okay, I'm going to give some more stylistic notes.

> 8. let combined = parseArgs Args

You don't need this one.

> Lines 9 - 11
> let sep = separateFiles args
>      fl = head (fst sep)
> showResultsFile fl (snd sep)

Why not:

let (f, s) = separateFiles args
showResultsFile (head f) s

> Lines 19-20
> processFile fl flags =
>   mapM dispatch [(flag, fl) | flag <- flags]

Why isn't this on one line? Its not particularly long.

> Lines 25-31
> dispatch (fl, fn) = do
>   handle <- openFile fl ReadMode
>   contents <- hGetContents handle
>   let cnt = getCounter fn
>       res = cnt contents
>   hClose handle
>   return res

Cleaner is:

dispatch (fl, fn) = do contents <- withFile fl ReadMode hGetContents
                       return $ getCounter fn contents

However also note that you are defining a function of the form

f :: (a, b) -> c

rather than the better

f :: a -> b -> c

Naturally, I see that the reason is that you are calling it from mapM.
However, I would define dispatch as a curried function, and then use
`curry dispatch` in your mapM. It makes dispatch much cleaner.

> Lines 36-44
> a bunch of putStrLn

You could also use mapM_ putStrLn [list of string to put out], removing
duplicate uses of putStrLn here.