[Haskell-cafe] Hard cases for "Note 5" in Haskell layout parsing

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

Does this help?

x1 = case do Nothing; Nothing of _ -> ()

x2 = case do Nothing
              Nothing
                  of _ -> ()

In fact in f2 play with all ways of positioning the line "of _ -> ()" to 
see there is almost no wrong placement!


On 2019-03-11 8:56 p.m., Chris Smith wrote:
> Quick question.  I'm trying to resolve Haskell layout in order to 
> provide better syntax highlighting, but without committing to building a 
> full Haskell parser.  The reason this is hard at face value is because 
> of the "Note 5" in the relevant part of the Haskell Report, which says 
> that a layout context closes whenever (a) the next token without closing 
> the layout context would not be the start of any valid Haskell syntax, 
> but (b) the current statement followed by an implicit '}' could be valid 
> Haskell syntax.  This rule is why it's okay to write "let x = 5 in x^2", 
> even though let introduces a new layout syntax: the "in" implicitly 
> closes it because "x = 5 in" isn't the start of any valid syntax, so the 
> layout context is implicitly closed before the "in".
> 
> Now for my question.  Does anyone know other cases besides let/in where 
> this commonly comes up?  Everywhere I've seen this before uses let/in as 
> an example, but then concludes that full parsing is needed and gives up 
> on simpler answers.  But the specific example with let/in is easily 
> handled with a special-purpose rule that closes layout contexts as 
> needed when an "in" keyword shows up.  I cannot seem to construct any 
> other examples, because other layout-introducing keywords have their 
> contents at the end of syntactic element.
> 
> Is there something I've missed here?  I don't even care if it's a 
> situation where something is technically valid but a horrible edge 
> case.  I'm interested in realistic counterexamples.
> 
> Thanks,
> Chris
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> To (un)subscribe, modify options or view archives go to:
> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
> Only members subscribed via the mailman list are allowed to post.
>