[Haskell-cafe] Re: Editors for Haskell

[Malcolm Wallace]

Pete Kazmier <pete-expires-20060806 at kazmier.com> wrote:

> As part of my learning experience, I think I want to see if I can
> write a haskell pastebin that does proper syntax highlighting.
> Someone in #haskell suggested that I use just a lexer because using a
> parser is overkill.  However, I can't make this assessment until I see
> how to use the parser and the information it can supply.

For simple static highlighting, a lexical analysis is more than
adequate.  (You've seen http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/fp/darcs/hscolour,
right?)  You only need a full parser if you want to do (e.g.) hyperlinks
from a variable usage to its definition site.  (You seen Programatica as
well, http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~hallgren/h2h.html right?)

Regards,
    Malcolm