Show-like output of GHC data types

[Johan Tibell]

On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 8:26 AM, Nicolas Frisby <nicolas.frisby at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 9:39 AM, Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at microsoft.com>wrote:
>
>>  What I would like to see is something like:****
>>
>> HsApp (HsApp (HsApp (HsVar "foldl'") (HsVar "+")) (HsLit 0)) (HsVar "xs")
>> ****
>>
>> We could derive ‘Show’ on everything but that would generate a LOT of new
>> code, that would seldom be used.  Also ‘Show’ doesn’t pretty-print so the
>> result would be illegible. ****
>>
>> **
>>
> If plugins could be used before the conversion to Core, such a plugin
> might be a tidy way to workaround the issue of bloating GHC's binary size
> with all that Show code.
>
> This previous email thread
> http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/glasgow-haskell-users/2012-March/022076.html seems
> relevant, and Marlow's comment there makes it sound like a pretty easy
> change.
>

I'm currently writing a ShowInstances module with orphan Show instances for
all GHC data types. I will just import that during development, but not
include it in the final code. It will hopefully satisfy my current need.
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