[Haskell-cafe] Is there a printable copy of the (GHC) library references anywhere?

[Paul Moore]

On 12/27/06, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Only a few of the standard libraries are useful unless you are doing
> something specific. i.e. Data.Maybe is generally useful, but
> Control.Monad.State is only useful if you are using a state monad.

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with you here. Yes, a lot of the libraries
are fairly specialised, but the problem is when you find you need a
specialised library, how do you know it exists in the standard
library? That's where something like the Haddock documentation is less
useful, as it's library-oriented rather than task-oriented.

For example (not a wonderful example, as I know the answer :-)) if I'm
writing a program and I need to build a parser, what's to tell me
(apart from asking around, or stumbling on it) that Parsec is the
library I want - or if I know that, that it's included in the standard
library and I don't need to go and install it?

(Other broad areas occasionally relevant to me - XML serialisation,
sending emails, SSH, implementing a Windows service...).

I'm not so much asking "can I do X?" as "how do I reach a level where
I stand a chance of knowing the answer to "can I do X?" without
asking?" :-) Ultimately, though, I agree that the basic answer is just
experience...

> If someone wrote a tour of Data.List/Data.Maybe as well as a few
> common functions out of Control.Monad that would probably make a nice
> companion to a tour of the prelude.

David House pointed me at Wikibooks entries for these two, which look
quite nice.

Cheers,
Paul.