[Template-haskell] using template haskell to implement pads for haskell?

[David Walker]

hi,

I am new to Haskell and even more so to Haskell templates -- if there
is an obvious answer to my question, please just point me at the
relevant URL.  Thanks! (If you think I should email this query to
a broader Haskell mailing list let me know too.)

My friends and I are thinking about adding an extension to Haskell to
implement a variant of the PADS domain-specific language.  PADS is a
convenient syntax to describe a file format and generate a bunch of
tools for it such as parser, printer, xml translator, semi-structured
query engine, statistical profiler, etc.  (We also have tools to
automatically infer descriptions from example data but that's not
quite the point here.)  See www.padsproj.org/ for lots more info and
examples of PADS for C and PADS for O'Caml.

The bottom line question is I'm wondering if I can or should implement
my PADS extension using Template Haskell to support the syntactic
extensions.  If not Template Haskell, is there another Haskell toolkit
I should know about?  If Template Haskell isn't powerful enough, I'll
probably just write a standalone compiler that parses my special
syntax and spits out a file full of Haskell declarations (this would
be a slight shame because then I would probably not support writing
PADS declarations in the midst of other Haskell code).  I've looked at
simple Template Haskell examples from the Haskell wiki, such as the
printf example, but I need to introduce a lot more syntax than that ...

What do I need from Template Haskell?  Well what I would like to do is
add a bit of syntax to Haskell that allows users to define what looks
like non-standard type declarations.  The "compiler" for these
non-standard type declarations will generate a collection of ordinary
Haskell declarations that can be used by a programmer.  The
non-standard typing declarations will be a mixture of what looks like
Haskell type declarations, Haskell code, perl-style syntax for regular
expressions and perhaps some other stuff I'm not thinking of right
now.  For example, suppose I want to write a program that converts a
file that contains a list of friends into XML (it's a bit of an
artificial example so I can illustrate several features):

3
Simon;Peyton Jones
John;Launchbury
#Phil;Wadler

The format starts with a number on the first line to indicate the number 
of entries
in the file.  Each line contains one entry which is a first name then a 
';' then
a last name.  Some lines begin with a # -- they are commented out 
because I'm
no longer friends with them.  Naturally, Phil Wadler falls into that 
category. :-) !

The Haskell program I want to write to do this would look something like:

-------------------------

{|
pdata Line =
  Comment /#.*/       
| Name    {first::Pstr /;/,
           last ::Pstr /\n/}

ptype Friends = (x::Pint, |{ x > 0 }|, /\n/, PlistFW x)
|}

friendsToXML :: String -> XML
friendsToXML s = PADSTools.toXML Friends s

-------------------------

Notice the following syntactic features:

-- {| and |} are delimiters that begin/end pads code (I don't really
care what the delimiters are as long as they are relatively
concise. For instance, if the delimiters were $( ... ), for instance,
that would be fine.

-- inside {| and |}, we can jump back into Haskell by using the delimiters
|{ and |}

-- there are some built-in, pre-defined base types like Pstr (for 
parsing and
printing strings) and Pint (for parsing and printing integers), PlistFW 
(which
takes an argument x to specify the number of elements in the list)

-- regular expressions /..../ show up in the middle of what would 
otherwise be
Haskell type declarations

-- there is syntax for declaring datatype-like things (introduced by 
pdata keyword)

-- the declarations are dependent types in that there is
binding (eg: the x::Pint in the "Friends" type -- the x is bound here)

-- variables bound in pads code can then be used in Haskell code nested
inside the declaration (eg: the Haskell expression x > 0 refers to the
variable x, defined in the outer pads code).
 
-- the outer Haskell code refers to declarations made inside the PADS
code.  (eg: the Haskell function "friendsToXML s = PADS.Tools.toXML
Friends s" refers to Friends, where Friends would be bound to a
datastructure generated by the compiler for the pads code.  PADSTools
is a module defined a priori that contains a number of functions such
as toXML, parse, print, query, etc.)

Anyway, if you have any comments on how I should handle the syntactic 
extensions,
let me know.

Thanks again,
Dave