[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANN: CmdArgs - easy command line argument processing

[Ben Franksen]

Neil Mitchell wrote:
> I am pleased to announce CmdArgs v0.1. CmdArgs is a library for easy
> command line argument processing - taking the arguments passed into
> your program from getArgs and converting them into a structured value
> for use in your program. Compared to the System.Console.GetOpts
> library there are two key advantages:
> 
> 1) The command line argument processors are shorter - in a typical
> case they are about 1/3 the size, 90 lines with getopts vs 30 simpler
> lines with CmdArgs (for HLint).
> 
> 2) CmdArgs can support multiple mode command lines, such as those
> found in hpc, darcs and cabal.
> 
> The guiding principle of CmdArgs is to try and write each piece of
> information only once, which makes the command line processing
> shorter, and eliminates many of the accidental copy-and-paste style
> bugs that are easy with getopts. CmdArgs requires GHC, but other than
> this restriction, I do not foresee any reason for anyone to use
> getopts over CmdArgs.

I very much like the general idea of this thing, but have a question
regarding the interface. This is from the docs:

(&=) :: a -> Attrib -> a
  Add attributes to a value. Always returns the first argument, but
  has a non-pure effect on the environment. Take care when performing
  program transformations.

  value &= attrib1 & attrib2

To expose an impure function (!) in an API, I don't know... I mean, couldn't
one just wrap the value like this

  data Attributed a -- opaque

  (&=) :: a -> Attrib -> Attributed a

  mode :: Data a => Attributed a -> Mode a

and thus retain a purely functional interface?

Cheers
Ben