[Haskell-cafe] foreach

[Brandon Moore]

Tim Newsham wrote:
> I was rewriting some non-haskell code in haskell and came up with this 
> construct:
>
> foreach l f = mapM_ f l
>
> main = do
> args <- getArgs
> foreach args (\arg -> do
> foreach [1..3] (\n -> do
> putStrLn ((show n) ++ ") " ++ arg)
> )
> )
>
> which is reminiscent of foreach in other languages. Seems fairly
> useful and I was wondering how hard it would be to add some syntactic
> sugar to the "do" construct to make it a little prettier (ie.
> not require the parenthesis, binding and nested do, as:
>
> main = do
> args <- getArgs
> foreach args arg
> foreach [1..3] n
> putStrLn ((show n) ++ ") " ++ arg)
>
> would this type of transformation be possible with template haskell
> or does this need stronger support from the parser to pull off?
I'm pretty sure you need parser support to pull off something like this, 
if by "pull off" you mean providing this syntax with less lexical 
overhead than the pure Haskell code. You'll have $( ) from a macro 
invocation, and [| |] around the body, or putting the body in a string 
literal.
TH is handy for metaprogramming, but not very good for syntax extension.

As for syntax design, the original isn't so bad. The only thing truly 
useless are the parentheses or $. Some visual indication that args is 
being bound is nice, plus the \bindings notation scales nicely to 
constructs binding more names. "do" is arguable, at least it seems 
pretty popular to use something similar with loops in syntaxes heavier 
on keywords than symbols.

Couldn't '\' delimit a subexpression, as parentheses do? Would there be 
any ambiguity in accepting code like State \s -> (s, s) instead of 
requiring State $ \s -> (s, s), or taking

main = do
args <- getArgs
foreach args \arg -> do
foreach [1..3] \n -> do
putStrLn ((show n) ++ ") " ++ arg

It would be a bit odd to have a kind of grouping the always starts 
explicitly and ends implicitly, but other than that it seems pretty 
handy, harmless, and natural (I know I've tried to write this sort of 
thing often enough)

Brandon