1. PROGRAMMING IN HASKELL
Types, Modules, and I/O
Based on lecture notes by Graham Hutton
The book “Learn You a Haskell for Great Good”
(and a few other sources)

2. File I/O
So far, we’ve worked mainly at the prompt, and done very little true input or output. This is logical in a functional language, since nothing has side effects!
However, this is a problem with I/O, since the whole point is to take input (and hence change some value) and then output something (which requires changing the state of the screen or other I/O device.
Luckily, Haskell offers work-arounds that separate the more imperative I/O.

3. A simple example: save the following file as helloword.hs
main = putStrLn "hello, world"
Now we actually compile a program:
$ ghc --make helloworld  
[1 of 1] Compiling Main       
( helloworld.hs, helloworld.o )  
Linking helloworld ...     
$ ./helloworld  
hello, world  2

4. What are these functions?
ghci> :t putStrLn  
putStrLn :: String -> IO ()  
ghci> :t putStrLn "hello, world"  
putStrLn "hello, world" :: IO () 
So putStrLn takes a string and returns an I/O action (which has a result type of (), the empty tuple).
In Haskell, an I/O action is one with a side effect - usually either reading or printing. Usually some kind of a return value, where () is a dummy value for no return. 3

5. A more interesting example:
An I/O action will only be performed when you give it the name “main” and then run the program.
A more interesting example:
main = do  
    putStrLn "Hello, what's your name?”  
    name <- getLine  
    putStrLn ("Hey " ++ name ++ ", 
you rock!")   
Notice the do statement - more imperative style.
Each step is an I/O action, and these glue together. 4

6. More on getLine: ghci> :t getLine getLine :: IO String
This is the first I/O we’ve seen that doesn’t have an empty tuple type - it has a String.
Once the string is returned, we use the <- to bind the result to the specified identifier.
Notice this is the first non-functional action we’ve seen, since this function will NOT have the same value every time it is run! This is called “impure” code, and the value name is “tainted”. 5

7. nameTag = "Hello, my name is " ++ getLine
An invalid example:
nameTag = "Hello, my name is " ++ getLine 
What’s the problem? Well, ++ requires both parameters to have the same type.
What is the return type of getLine?
Another word of warning: what does the following do?
name = getLine    6

8. ghci> putStrLn "HEEY" HEEY
Just remember that I/O actions are only performed in a few possible places:
A main function
inside a bigger I/O block that we have composed with a do (and remember that the last action can’t be bound to a name, since that is the one that is the return type).
At the ghci prompt:
ghci> putStrLn "HEEY"  
HEEY     7

9. Note that <- is for I/O, and let for expressions.
You can use let statements inside do blocks, to call other functions (and with no “in” part required):
import Data.Char 
main = do  
    putStrLn "What's your first name?"  
    firstName <- getLine  
    putStrLn "What's your last name?"  
    lastName <- getLine  
    let bigFirstName = map toUpper firstName  
        bigLastName = map toUpper lastName  
    putStrLn $ "hey " ++ bigFirstName ++ " " ++ 
bigLastName ++ ", how are you?"    
Note that <- is for I/O, and let for expressions. 8

10. What is return?
Does NOT signal the end of execution! Return instead makes an I/O action out of a pure value.
main = do  
    a <- return "hell"  
    b <- return "yeah!"  
    putStrLn $ a ++ " " ++ b  
In essence, return is the opposite of <-. Instead of “unwrapping” I/O Strings, it wraps them. 9

11. Last example was a bit redundant, though – could use a let instead:
main = do
let a = "hell"
b = "yeah"
putStrLn $ a ++ " " ++ b  
Usually, you’ll use return to create I/O actions that don’t do anything (but you have to have one anyway, like an if-then-else), or for the last line of a do block, so it returns some value we want. 10

12. Takeaway: Return in haskell is NOT like other languages.
main = do   
    line <- getLine  
    if null line  
        then return ()  
        else do  
            putStrLn $ reverseWords line              
main     
reverseWords :: String -> String  
reverseWords = unwords . map reverse . words 
Note: reverseWords = unwords . map reverse . words is the same as
reverseWords st = nwords (map reverse (words st)) 11

13. print (works on any type in show, but calls show first)
Other I/O functions:
print (works on any type in show, but calls show first)
putStr - And as putStrLn, but no newline
putChar and getChar
main = do  print True  
            print 2  
            print "haha"  
            print 3.2  
            print [3,4,3] 
main = do     
    c <- getChar  
    if c /= ' '  
        then do  
            putChar c  
            main  
        else return ()   12

14. More advanced functionality is available in Control.Monad:
import Control.Monad  
import Data.Char     
main = forever $ do  
    putStr "Give me some input: "  
    l <- getLine  
    putStrLn $ map toUpper l 
(Will indefinitely ask for input and print it back out capitalized.) 13

15. sequence: takes list of I/O actions and does them one after the other
Other functions:
sequence: takes list of I/O actions and does them one after the other
mapM: takes a function (which returns an I/O) and maps it over a list
Others available in Control.Monad:
when: takes boolean and I/O action. If bool is true, returns same I/O, and if false, does a return instead 14

16. Recap of Typeclasses
We have seen typeclasses, which describe classes of data where operations of a certain type make sense.
Look more closely:
class Eq a where
(==) :: a -> a -> Bool
(/=) :: a -> a -> Bool
x == y = not (x /= y)
x /= y = not (x == y) 15

17. data TrafficLight = Red | Yellow | Green
Now – say we want to make a new type and make sure it belongs to a given typeclass. Here’s how:
data TrafficLight = Red | Yellow | Green
instance Eq TrafficLight where
Red == Red = True
Green == Green = True
Yellow == Yellow = True
_ == _ = False 16

18. instance Show TrafficLight where show Red = "Red light"
Now maybe we want to be able to display these at the prompt. To do this, we need to add this to the “show” class.
(Remember those weird errors with the trees yesterday? We hadn’t added trees to this class!)
instance Show TrafficLight where
show Red = "Red light"
show Yellow = "Yellow light"
show Green = "Green light" 17

19. And finally, we can use these things:
ghci> Red == Red
True
ghci> Red == Yellow
False
ghci> Red `elem` [Red, Yellow, Green]
ghci> [Red, Yellow, Green]
[Red light,Yellow light,Green light] 18

20. Functors
Functors are a typeclass, just like Ord, Eq, Show, and all the others. This one is designed to hold things that can be mapped over; for example, lists are part of this typeclass.
class Functor f where  
    fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
This type is interesting - not like previous exmaples, like in EQ, where (==) :: (Eq a) => a -> a -> Bool. Here, f is NOT a concrete type, but a type constructor that takes one parameter. 19

21. fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
Compare fmap to map:
fmap :: (a -> b) -> f a -> f b
map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b]   
So map is a lot like a functor! Here, map takes a function and a list of type a, and returns a list of type b.
In fact, can define map in terms of fmap:
instance Functor [] where  
    fmap = map    20

22. instance Functor [] where fmap = map
Notice what we wrote:
instance Functor [] where  
    fmap = map   
We did NOT write “instance Functor [a] where…”, since f has to be a type constructor that takes one type.
Here, [a] is already a concrete type, while [] is a type constructor that takes one type and can produce many types, like [Int], [String], [[Int]], etc. 21

23. instance Functor Maybe where fmap f (Just x) = Just (f x)
Another example:
instance Functor Maybe where  
    fmap f (Just x) = Just (f x)  
    fmap f Nothing = Nothing   
Again, we did NOT write “instance Functor (Maybe m) where…”, since functor wants a type constructor.
Mentally replace the f’s with Maybe, so fmap acts like (a -> b) -> Maybe a -> Maybe b.
If we put (Maybe m), would have (a -> b) -> (Maybe m) a -> (Maybe m) b, which looks wrong. 22

24. ghci> fmap (++ " HEY GUYS IM INSIDE THE
Using it:
ghci> fmap (++ " HEY GUYS IM INSIDE THE 
JUST") (Just "Something serious.")  
Just "Something serious. HEY GUYS IM INSIDE THE JUST"  
JUST") Nothing  
Nothing  
ghci> fmap (*2) (Just 200)  
Just 400  
ghci> fmap (*2) Nothing  
Nothing      23

25. Back to trees, as an example to put it all together:
Let’s make a binary search tree type. Need comparisons to make sense, so want the type to be in Eq.
Also going to have it be Show and Read, so anything in the tree can be converted to a string and printed (just to make displaying easier).
data Tree a = EmptyTree
| Node a (Tree a) (Tree a)
deriving (Show,Read,Eq) 24

26. Note that this is slightly different than our last class.
Node 5 (Node 3 (Node 1 EmptyTree EmptyTree) (Node 4 EmptyTree EmptyTree)) (Node 6 EmptyTree EmptyTree)
This will let us code an insert that’s a bit easier to process, though!
First step – a function to make a single node tree:
singleton :: a -> Tree a  
singleton x = Node x EmptyTree EmptyTree 25

27. Now – go code insert!
treeInsert :: (Ord a) => a -> Tree a -> Tree a  
treeInsert x EmptyTree =   
treeInsert x (Node a left right)  = 
     26

28. My insert: treeInsert :: (Ord a) => a -> Tree a -> Tree a
treeInsert x EmptyTree = singleton x  
treeInsert x (Node a left right)   
    | x == a = Node x left right  
    | x < a  = Node a (treeInsert x left) right  
    | x > a  = Node a left (treeInsert x right)      27

29. Find:
findInTree :: (Ord a) => a -> Tree a -> Bool  
findInTree x EmptyTree = False  
findInTree x (Node a left right)  
    | x == a = True  
    | x < a  = findInTree x left  
    | x > a  = findInTree x right    
Note: If this is an “unordered” tree, would need to search both left and right subtrees. 28

30. ghci> let numsTree = foldr treeInsert EmptyTree nums
An example run:
ghci> let nums = [8,6,4,1,7,3,5]  
ghci> let numsTree = foldr treeInsert EmptyTree nums  
ghci> numsTree  
Node 5 (Node 3 (Node 1 EmptyTree EmptyTree) (Node 4 EmptyTree EmptyTree)) (Node 7 (Node 6 EmptyTree EmptyTree) (Node 8 EmptyTree EmptyTree))    29

31. (a -> b) -> Tree a -> Tree b
Back to functors:
If we looked at fmap as though it were only for trees, it would look something like:
(a -> b) -> Tree a -> Tree b
We can certainly phrase this as a functor, also:
instance Functor Tree where  
    fmap f EmptyTree = EmptyTree  
    fmap f (Node x leftsub rightsub) = 
Node (f x) (fmap f leftsub) 
(fmap f rightsub)    30

32. Using the tree functor:
ghci> fmap (*2) EmptyTree  
EmptyTree  
ghci> fmap (*4) (foldr treeInsert 
EmptyTree [5,7,3,2,1,7])  
Node 28 (Node 4 EmptyTree (Node 8 EmptyTree (Node 12 EmptyTree (Node 20 EmptyTree EmptyTree)))) EmptyTree     31

33. System Level programming
Scripting functionality deals with I/O as a necessity.
The module System.Environment has several to help with this:
getArgs: returns a list of the arguments that the program was run with
getProgName: returns the string which is the program name
(Note: I’ll be assuming you compile using “ghc –make myprogram” and then running “./myprogram”.
But you could also do “runhaskell myprogram.hs”.) 32

34. An example: import System.Environment import Data.List main = do
args <- getArgs
progName <- getProgName
putStrLn "The arguments are:"
mapM putStrLn args
putStrLn "The program name is:"
putStrLn progName 33

35. $ ./arg-test first second w00t "multi word arg" The arguments are:
The output:
$ ./arg-test first second w00t "multi word arg"
The arguments are:
first
second
w00t
multi word arg
The program name is:
arg-test 34