How does GHC implement layout?

[Alexis King]

On 4/4/21 1:52 PM, Iavor Diatchki wrote:
> Hi Alexis,
>
> I wasn't sure what the "alternative layout" is either and did some 
> googling, and it appears that it is something that was never really 
> documented properly.   The following link contains pointers to the 
> commit that introduced it (in 2009!) (not the main ticket but some of 
> the comments)

Thanks, that’s a helpful pointer, though of course it still doesn’t 
explain very much. I’m still interested in understanding what the 
purpose of “alternative layout” is and how it operates, if anyone else 
has any idea.

> Overall, I do think that Haskell's layout rule is more complicated 
> than it needs to be, and this is mostly because of the rule that 
> requires the insertion of a "virtual close curly" on a parse error.

Yes, this does seem to be by far the trickiest bit. But I’d be sad not 
to have it, as without it, even simple things like

    let x = 3 in e

would not be grammatically valid.

> My feeling is that it'd be pretty tricky to do layout in the parser 
> with grammar rules, but you may be able to do something with the 
> parser state.

Yes, I have some vague ideas, but none of them are particularly fleshed 
out. It’s entirely possible that I just don’t understand the 
relationship between the lexer and the parser (which seems somewhat 
obscured by the “alternative layout” stuff), and the ideas I have are 
what’s already implemented today. I’ll have to study the implementation 
more closely.

In any case, thank you for your response! The ALR-related pointer 
certainly clarifies at least a little.

Alexis

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