There are certian things haskell is very good at, and I had the pleasure
of using it for one such thing yesterday. I wanted to support
expressions like
find(1) does, in
git-annex.
Something like:
git-annex drop --not --exclude '*.mp3' --and \
-\( --in usbdrive --or --in archive -\) --and \
--not --copies 3
So, parens and booleans and some kind of domain-specific operations.
It's easy to build a data structure in haskell that can contain this
sort of expression.
- A Token can either be a single word, or an Operation of an arbitrary type. -
data Token op = Token String Operation op
deriving (Show, Eq)
data Matcher op = Any
And (Matcher op) (Matcher op)
Or (Matcher op) (Matcher op)
Not (Matcher op)
Op op
deriving (Show, Eq)
(The
op could just be a
String, but is parameterized for reasons we'll
see later.)
As command-line options, the expression is already tokenised, so all I needed
to do to parse it is consume a list of the Tokens. The only mildly tricky
thing is handling the parens right -- I chose to not make it worry if there
were too many, or too few closing parens.
generate :: [Token op] -> Matcher op
generate ts = generate' Any ts
generate' :: Matcher op -> [Token op] -> Matcher op
generate' m [] = m
generate' m ts = uncurry generate' $ consume m ts
consume :: Matcher op -> [Token op] -> (Matcher op, [Token op])
consume m [] = (m, [])
consume m ((Operation o):ts) = (m And Op o, ts)
consume m ((Token t):ts)
t == "and" = cont $ m And next
t == "or" = cont $ m Or next
t == "not" = cont $ m And (Not next)
t == "(" = let (n, r) = consume next rest in (m And n, r)
t == ")" = (m, ts)
otherwise = error $ "unknown token " ++ t
where
(next, rest) = consume Any ts
cont v = (v, rest)
Once a Matcher is built, it can be used to check if things
match the expression the user supplied. This next bit of code almost writes
itself.
- Checks if a Matcher matches, using a supplied function to check
- the value of Operations. -
match :: (op -> v -> Bool) -> Matcher op -> v -> Bool
match a m v = go m
where
go Any = True
go (And m1 m2) = go m1 && go m2
go (Or m1 m2) = go m1 go m2
go (Not m1) = not (go m1)
go (Op o) = a o v
And that's it! This is all nearly completly generic and could be used
for a great many things that need support for this sort of expression,
as long as they can be checked in pure code.
A trivial example:
*Utility.Matcher> let m = generate [Operation True, Token "and", Token "(", Operation False, Token "or", Token, "not", Operation False, Token ")"]
*Utility.Matcher> match (const . id) m undefined
True
For my case though, I needed to run some IO actions to check if expressions
about files were true. This is where I was very pleased to see a monadic
version of
match could easily be built.
- Runs a monadic Matcher, where Operations are actions in the monad. -
matchM :: Monad m => Matcher (v -> m Bool) -> v -> m Bool
matchM m v = go m
where
go Any = return True
go (And m1 m2) = liftM2 (&&) (go m1) (go m2)
go (Or m1 m2) = liftM2 ( ) (go m1) (go m2)
go (Not m1) = liftM not (go m1)
go (Op o) = o v
With this and about 100 lines of code to implement specific tests like
--copies and --in, git-annex now supports the example at the top.
Just for comparison,
find(1) has thousands of lines of C code to
build a similar parse tree from the command line parameters and run it.
Although I was surprised to see that it optimises expressions by eg,
reordering cheaper tests first.
The last time I wrote this kind of thing was in perl, and there the
natural way was to carefully translate
the expression into perl code, which was then evaled. Meaning the code
was susceptible to security holes.
Anyway, this is nothing that has not been done a hundred times in haskell
before, but it's very nice that it makes it so clean, easy, and generic.
Periodic Calendar, a GPL ed GUI application, coded in Java that helps keeping track of women menstrual cycles and predict fertility periods, has just entered Debian. This information can be used as supportive either for conception or contraception planning.
This program (pcalendar in Debian) is by far more complete than mencal (a simple menstruation calendar that can be run in the console) or cycle (a windowed calendar that can calculate stuff based on the length of the cycle or on statistics of previous periods), and provides support for BBT and sympto-thermal methods, which have the highest reliability in fertility periods prediction. User can thus choose any subset of the features to be used or even fall to the generic calendar method (which if used alone is very unreliable).
Keep in mind, though, that -as the authors of the program insist on- Periodic Calendar is NOT an equal substitute to the fertility planning consultants or doctors, and methods used are not 100% effective. It s a useful program, anyway.
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Traditionally, when you start a program to view a document, for instance
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