[Haskell-cafe] Parsec question: how to access parser state

[Dimitry Golubovsky]

Hi,

I am trying to develop a parser with the Parsec library. At some point I 
need to do something with parser state, say, convert it to a string.

I declared the type for the parser:

type TParser a = GenParser Token (FiniteMap String Declaration) a

The FiniteMap (which is the user state) is expected to be updated during 
parsing whus building some internal lookup table.

and in one of the parsing functions I want to call

show getState

assuming it will apply show to the FiniteMap and return some string of 
characters.

During compliation, I get:

     No instance for (Show (GenParser tok st st))
       arising from use of `show' at (file location)
     In the first argument of `xxxx', namely `(show getState)'

But GenParser is a newtype, not a data constructor, so attempt to write

instance Show (GenParser tok st t)

results in error message about missing constructor GenParser.

How could I extract actual user state from the result of getState?

The parser itself works as needed, but dealing with user state gets me 
in trouble.

Dimitry Golubovsky
Middletown, CT