please help me

[Michal Wallace]

On Sun, 7 Apr 2002, Eric wrote:

|> Hi there, I am a beginner a haskell,and I have some
|> difficulty in dealing with an assignment that is to
|> translate a string representation of a list of
|> appointments into a list of appointments.  For example:

[requirements snipped] 

|> How can I finish the requirement make use of library
|> functions such as words, unwords, lines and break.

Hey Leo,

Well, I'm just learning haskell too, but I decided to give
this a shot. I think I solved the main problem, but I did
hit a few snags of my own so I can't be sure. Here goes:

Basically, I defined "appointment" as a single type...  But
I couldn't figure out how to print that type. So I can't
really test what I've done, other than I know it
compiles. :) Can someone show me how to fill in "show" down
here? )

> module Main where
> 
> data Appt = Appt (Bool, Int, Int, String)
> instance Show Appt where
>    show x = "???????????"


I then used liness and words to break the multi-line string
into a list of lists of words:

> strToApps :: String -> [Appt]
> strToApps x = map lineToApp (lines x)
> lineToApp x = wordsToApp (words x)


Since the starting "!" was optional, the structure of the
list could go in two directions here:

> wordsToApp :: [String] -> Appt
> wordsToApp ws | head ws == "!" = mkAppt True (tail ws)
>               | otherwise      = mkAppt False (ws)


Now it's just a matter of parsing the rest of the line.  For
simplicity's sake, I took the liberty of assuming you always
used the same number of digits for the hours, so I didn't
have to search for the "-":

> mkAppt :: Bool -> [String] -> Appt
> mkAppt isImp (w:ws) = Appt (isImp, start, done, note)
>     where (hs, hd) = splitAt 3 w  -- assumes zero-padded (eg 01-03)
>           start = atoi hs
>           done = atoi hd
>           note = foldr1 concat ws
>           concat a b = a ++ " " ++ b



That "atoi" function came from working through the exercises
in Rex Pages online book ( http://www.cs.ou.edu/cs1323h/textbook/haskell.shtml )

> horner str = foldr1 op (reverse str)
>     where op d s = d + (10 * s)
> atoi str = horner [digitToInt d | d <- str]


Then I defined a main function:

> -- I wonder what a refec is. :)
> main = do print $ strToApps "! 10-11 lecture\n12-13 lunch at the refec :("


... And that's it! I think it would work if I could figure
out how to print Appt objects (or whatever you call them in
haskell). Meanwhile, I get this because of the way I defined
show:

Main> main
[???????????,???????????]

Cheers,

- Michal   http://www.sabren.net/   sabren@manifestation.com 
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