1 line simple cat in Haskell

[Tom Moertel]

On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 22:43, William Lee Irwin III wrote:
> There is a semantic difference here, as the version I posted above takes
> files from the command-line, though it does fail to accommodate the
> pass-through case, which is handled by: [...]

I need this behavior often enough to justify writing a small module to
provide it:

Full version at http://tea.moertel.com/~thor/ravt/ravt-0.9/GetInput.hs

-- GetInput.hs
-- Tom Moertel <tom@moertel.com>
-- CVS $Id: GetInput.hs,v 1.1 2002/09/09 04:57:23 thor Exp $

-- | This module provides a method of getting input from files named
-- on the command line or, if no files are provided, from standard
-- input.  This mimics Perl's default input handling, which is
-- convenient.  Also, the module provides versions of the standard
-- 'interact' function that use these input-getting behaviors.

module GetInput ( getInputDefault, getInputFromArgs
                , interactDefault, interactFromArgs) where

import Control.Monad (liftM)
import System.Environment (getArgs)

-- | Reads the arguments passed on the command line and then passes
-- them to 'getInputFromArgs' for handling.

getInputDefault         :: IO String
getInputDefault         =  getArgs >>= getInputFromArgs

-- | Treats the input list as a list of files from which to read
-- input sequentially.  If the list is empty, input is read from
-- standard input.  If "-" is passed as a file, it is taken to
-- mean standard input.

getInputFromArgs        :: [String] -> IO String
getInputFromArgs []     =  getContents
getInputFromArgs xs     =  liftM concat (mapM readFromFile xs)
    where
    readFromFile "-"    =  getContents
    readFromFile file   =  readFile file

-- | Gets input via 'getInputDefault', processes it with the
-- function argument @f@, and then prints the @String@ that
-- @f@ returns.

interactDefault         :: (String -> String) -> IO ()
interactDefault f       =  getInputDefault >>= putStrLn . f

-- | Gets input via 'getInputFromArgs', processes it with the
-- function argument @f@, and then prints the @String@ that
-- @f@ returns.

interactFromArgs        :: [String] -> (String -> String) -> IO ()
interactFromArgs args f
                        =  getInputFromArgs args >>= putStrLn . f