[Haskell-cafe] introspection | meta data

[Crypt Master]

Hi

I recently had to implement an algorthm in C, and found the time to give it 
a go in Haskell to aid in learning haskell.

I found myself "needing" runtime meta information on data types (well tuples 
which are data (a,b) = (a,b)). Does haskell allow this ?

Basically I need to loop over the fields in my record. I came up with 
functions like this:

-- Toggle fields to/from generic value
toggle sf origsf 0 = sf
toggle sf origsf n
    | newValue == "*ALL"   = newSF
    | otherwise            = toggle newSF origsf (n-1)     -- <--------- 
Loop through fields by No
      where
       newValue = toggleField (getSFField n sf) (getSFField n origsf)    --  
<---- accessor functions
       newSF    = setSFField n sf newValue
....

getSFField :: Int -> SearchFilter -> String
getSFField 1 (x,_,_,_,_) = x
getSFField 2 (_,x,_,_,_) = x
....

setSFField :: Int -> SearchFilter -> String -> SearchFilter
setSFField 1 (a,b,c,d,e) f = (f,b,c,d,e)
setSFField 2 (a,b,c,d,e) f = (a,f,c,d,e)
....

The only problem with this is that if I want to add or remove a field, I 
need to change a lot of code.

In most OO lanaguages I could use "reflection" to loop through my fields.

In C (which also doesnt have meta data) I got round it by using pointers in 
an array. To add or remove a field just requires adding or removing a 
pointer to my array which is one line of code.

The only thought I had was of using lists, but the this would mean I loose 
pattern matching against all values at once which is appealing for calrify 
of code.

So what is the general haskell approach to this type of introspection/meta 
data problem... ?


Thanks,

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