[Haskell-cafe] Layout rule (was Re: PrefixMap: code reviewrequest)

[Daniel Fischer]

Am Montag, 6. März 2006 12:30 schrieb Malcolm Wallace:
> Brian Hulley wrote:
> > However I think there is an error in the description of this in
> > section 2.7  of the Haskell98 report, which states:
> >
> > "If the indentation of the non-brace lexeme immediately following a
> > where,  let, do or of is less than or equal to the current indentation
> > level, then  instead of starting a layout, an empty list "{}" is
> > inserted, and layout  processing occurs for the current level ..."
> >
> > I dispute the "or equal" in the above statement, since it seems to be
> > clearly in contradiction to what is actually being done.
>
> Section 2.7 does say that it is an informal description, so although it
> is correct, it is not complete.  In the case of the module header, the
> question is really "what is the current indentation level?" (that we
> must be strictly greater than).  The answer can be found in the formal
> definition of the layout rule in section 9.3.  At the beginning of the
> module, there is _no_ current indentation level - thus the fourth
> equation of L applies.
>
> Regards,
>     Malcolm

I think, the third from last equation of L applies, since
"If the first lexeme of a module is _not_ { or module, then it is preceded by 
{n} where n is the indentation of the lexeme.", so we start L with
L ('module':ts) [].

Another thing that irritates me:
in section 9.5, we have the production

body		-> { impdecls; topdecls }
		| { impdecls }
		| { topdecls }

The first line seems to suggest that import declaraions were admissible also 
after topdecls, but any attempt to place an impdecl after a topdecl leads 
--fortunately-- to a parse error in hugs and ghc, shouldn't the production be

body		-> { impdecls }; { topdecls } ?

Cheers,
Daniel

-- 

"In My Egotistical Opinion, most people's C programs should be
indented six feet downward and covered with dirt."
	-- Blair P. Houghton