Tutorials/Programming Haskell/Argument handling
Programming Haskell: argument handling and a complete cat
This is part three in a series of tutorials on programming Haskell.
Today we'll look more into how Haskell interacts with its environment, robust command line argument parsing, and writing a complete program.
Note: This article was written a while ago and recently (as of 2015) more people are opting to use the excellent optparse-applicative package.
Administrivia[edit]
Some clarifications on issues raised by yesterday's article.
Chunks[edit]
One issue pointed out was that the 'chunk' function was missing. This was semi-intentional. Anyway, this function just splits a list into 'n' chunks:
chunk n xs = chunk' i xs
where
chunk' _ [] = []
chunk' n xs = a : chunk' n b where (a,b) = splitAt n xs
i = ceiling (fromIntegral (length xs) / fromIntegral n)You may be able to write a neater one..
Solipsistic philosophers[edit]
Also, an amusing thread appeared on reddit, regarding solipsistic philosopher programs:
Of course, a good optimizing compiler will replace your solipsistic philosopher with a no-op.
A good optimising compiler, or any Haskell compiler :-) Since results that are never required are not computed in Haskell, due to laziness, we can write high performance solipsism simulators all day long:
main = do
let largestNumber = last [1..]
return ()Running our simulation of the philosopher-mathematician pondering some thoughts on large numbers:
$ ghc A.hs $ ./a.out ./a.out 0.00s user 0.01s system 100% cpu 0.003 total
Ok. Enough jokes. Show me the code!
Getting to work[edit]
Yesterday we implemented a few toy unix programs, including 'cat'. Today we'll look at writing a complete cat program, but with a focus on interacting properly with the environment and being careful about command line handling. For our running examples, we'll consider the 'cat' and 'tac' programs. The basic spec for 'cat' is:
The cat utility reads files sequentially, writing them to the standard output. The file operands are processed in command-line order. If file is a single dash (`-') or absent, cat reads from the standard input.
It's the 'id' function of the unix shell. BSD 'cat.c' is a 255 line C program. From the man page we can see it does more than just concatenate files. It can also:
- Numbers the output lines, starting at 1.
- Squeezes multiple adjacent empty lines
- Displays non-printing characters so they are visible.
Let's start by looking at the command line argument processing code.
Getting in arguments[edit]
The basic way to get arguments in a Haskell program is provided by the System.Environment library. We can use the getArgs function:
Prelude> :m + System.Environment
Prelude System.Environment> :t getArgs getArgs :: IO [String]
Prelude System.Environment> do a <- getArgs; print a []
Which is empty, since we didn't provide any arguments!
In a small program we can implement all argument handling using just 'getArgs', and some simple list functions. For example, here's a basic 'tac' program, to reverse its input:
import System.Environment
import System.Exit
main = getArgs >>= parse >>= putStr . tac
tac = unlines . reverse . lines
parse ["-h"] = usage >> exit
parse ["-v"] = version >> exit
parse [] = getContents
parse fs = concat `fmap` mapM readFile fs
usage = putStrLn "Usage: tac [-vh] [file ..]"
version = putStrLn "Haskell tac 0.1"
exit = exitWith ExitSuccess
die = exitWith (ExitFailure 1)This program concatenates and prints the contents of files in reverse (or reads from stdin with no arguments), along with a couple of basic command line flags for version and help strings. It's also reasonably careful about setting exit status on finishing, using the functions from System.Exit. The actual core algorithm for 'tac' is a nice pure Haskell function, and really all the hard work is done processing the command line args.
Some example use:
$ ./tac -h Usage: tac [-vh] [file ..]
$ ./tac -v Haskell tac 0.1
$ ./tac A.hs B.hs return n print 1 n <- getLine g = do ... import System.Exit import System.Environment
$ ./tac < A.hs die = exitWith (ExitFailure 1) exit = exitWith ExitSuccess version = putStrLn "Haskell tac 0.1" ... import System.Exit import System.Environment
As you can see, once compiled it behaves like a normal unix utility, properly dealing with stdin, with file arguments and the shell.
Note that getArgs doesn't return the program name. To get that we use:
Prelude System.Environment> :t getProgName getProgName :: IO String
The environment[edit]
Many programs also make use of environment variables. We can get access to the full shell 'env' using
Prelude System.Environment> :t getEnvironment getEnvironment :: IO [(String, String)]
Which returns an association list, mapping environment variables to their values. We can stick this list straight into an efficient Map structure, for later use. Here's an interactive example:
env <- do e <- getEnvironment; return (Data.Map.fromList e)which we could also write as:
env <- Data.Map.fromList `fmap` getEnvironmentOnce we've got the environment in a useful Map, we can inspect it using Map lookups:
Prelude System.Environment> :t env
env :: Data.Map.Map String String
Prelude System.Environment> :t Data.Map.lookup
Data.Map.lookup :: (Ord k, Monad m) => k -> Data.Map.Map k a -> m aThat is, the lookup function takes some key, 'k', and a Map from keys to elements of type 'a', and returns an element, if found, in some monad.
More on failure[edit]
You may recall from the first tutorial that the Map 'lookup' function will fail if the key is not found. The particular way you wish it to fail depends on which monad you use. You can tell this from the type of lookup. The
lookup :: (Monad m) => ... m asyntax indicates that lookup is polymorphic in its monad: it will work for any monad type, and its behaviour is determined by the particular instance of the monad interface you ask for. When a lookup fails, it calls the 'fail' function for the monad you're using. When a lookup is successful, it calls the 'return' function of the same monad. Being 'polymorphic in a monad' really just means that it will call which particular concrete monad 'subclass' you happen to be using.
Looking at the various useful monads for this, we can choose which failure behaviour we would prefer. Here's the implementation of the 'fail' interface for a variety of monads. It's up to you to pick which behaviour you'd like.
For Maybes, we get the null value, Nothing, on failure:
instance Monad Maybe where
return = Just
fail _ = NothingFor Eithers, we get an error string:
instance (Error e) => Monad (Either e) where
return = Right
fail s = Left (strMsg s)For lists, we get the empty list on failure:
instance Monad [] where
return x = [x]
fail _ = []And for IO we get an exception thrown:
instance Monad IO where
fail = ioError . userError
return = returnIOSo, depending on the type signature, the compiler will statically pick one of these 'fail's to use on a lookup failing at runtime. For example, to fail with a null value, we'd use the Maybe monad:
Prelude System.Environment> Data.Map.lookup "USER" env :: Maybe String Just "dons"
Prelude System.Environment> Data.Map.lookup "LUSER" env :: Maybe String Nothing
Using Nothing for fatal errors isn't the best practice for large programs, since you usually need to know what failed. For a string-annotated Nothing, we can use the Either monad:
Prelude System.Environment> :m + Control.Monad.Error
Prelude System.Environment Control.Monad.Error> Data.Map.lookup "LUSER" env :: Either String String Left "Data.Map.lookup: Key not found"
Which is more useful. To fail with a proper exception we'd use the IO monad:
Prelude System.Environment> Data.Map.lookup "LUSER" env :: IO String *** Exception: user error (Data.Map.lookup: Key not found)
We'll now turn to a more flexible approach to argument parsing.
GetOpt[edit]
The base Haskell library comes with an implementation of getopt, a useful library for standardised argument handling. Let's implement the argument handling of the unix 'cat' program using this lib. Note however, that there are more convenient ways to use the GetOpt module.
A type for flags[edit]
The first thing to do is define a data type representing the valid flags. First, let's import all the libraries I'll use:
import Control.Monad
import Data.Char
import Data.List
import System.Console.GetOpt
import System.Environment
import System.Exit
import System.IO
import Text.PrintfNow in a new file, Cat.hs, we'll write:
data Flag
= Blanks -- -b
| Dollar -- -e
| Squeeze -- -s
| Tabs -- -t
| Unbuffered -- -u
| Invisible -- -v
| Number -- -n
| Help -- --help
deriving (Eq,Ord,Enum,Show,Bounded)The 'data' keyword defines a new data type, 'Flag', which can have one of several values. Such a type is often called a sum (or union) type. So 'Flag' is a new user-defined type, just like other types, such as Bool or Int. The identifiers on the right hand side of the | are the types constructors. That is, values which have type 'Flag'. We ask the compiler to also derive some instances of various common classes for us (so we don't have to write the code ourselves).
With just this we can already start playing around with the flag data type in GHCi:
> :reload > :m + Data.List > let s = [Number, Squeeze, Unbuffered, Squeeze]
*Main Data.List> let s = [Number, Squeeze, Unbuffered, Squeeze]
*Main Data.List> sort s [Squeeze,Squeeze,Unbuffered,Number]
*Main Data.List> nub s [Number,Squeeze,Unbuffered]
*Main Data.List> map fromEnum s [6,2,4,2]
*Main Data.List> [Blanks .. ] [Blanks,Dollar,Squeeze,Tabs,Unbuffered,Invisible,Number,Help]
As you may already know, user defined data types are really first class citizens in Haskell, and behave just like the 'inbuilt' types.
Binding to command line flags[edit]
The next step is to associate some particular command line strings with each abstract flag. We do this by writing a list of 'Option's, which tie long and short argument flags to the particular abstract Flag value we need, and also associated a help string with each flag:
flags =
[Option ['b'] [] (NoArg Blanks)
"Implies the -n option but doesn't count blank lines."
,Option ['e'] [] (NoArg Dollar)
"Implies the -v option and also prints a dollar sign (`$') at the end of each line."
,Option ['n'] [] (NoArg Number)
"Number the output lines, starting at 1."
,Option ['s'] [] (NoArg Squeeze)
"Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be single spaced."
,Option ['t'] [] (NoArg Tabs)
"Implies the -v option and also prints tab characters as `^I'."
,Option ['u'] [] (NoArg Unbuffered)
"The output is guaranteed to be unbuffered (see setbuf(3))."
,Option ['v'] [] (NoArg Invisible)
"Displays non-printing characters so they are visible."
,Option [] ["help"] (NoArg Help)
"Print this help message"
]Parsing the flags[edit]
To actually turn the list of command line flags getArgs gives us, into a useful list of abstract Flag values, we use the 'getOpt' function, which returns a triple consisting of flags that were set, a list of any non-flag arguments, and a list of error messages. First we need a couple of libraries:
And now to parse the 'cat' argument grammar, we would use:
parse argv = case getOpt Permute flags argv of
(args,fs,[]) -> do
let files = if null fs then ["-"] else fs
if Help `elem` args
then do hPutStrLn stderr (usageInfo header flags)
exitWith ExitSuccess
else return (nub (concatMap set args), files)
(_,_,errs) -> do
hPutStrLn stderr (concat errs ++ usageInfo header flags)
exitWith (ExitFailure 1)
where header = "Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]"If the arguments don't make sense, we fail with a usage message, and set the exit status to 1. The final list of flags to use, and any files to open, can be returned to main for processing now:
main = do
(as, fs) <- getArgs >>= parse
putStrLn $ "Flags: " ++ show as
putStrLn $ "Files: " ++ show fsWe can now test out the argument parsing code:
$ ghc Cat.hs
$ ./a.out Flags: [] Files: []
$ ./a.out A.hs Z.hs Flags: [] Files: ["A.hs","Z.hs"]
Ok, files are good. How about the flags that imply other flags?
$ ./a.out -b A.hs Z.hs Flags: [Number,Blanks] Files: ["A.hs","Z.hs"]
$ ./a.out -btvu A.hs Z.hs Flags: [Number,Blanks,Tabs,Invisible,Unbuffered] Files: ["A.hs","Z.hs"]
Good. And invalid flags:
$ ./a.out -i A.hs Z.hs
unrecognized option `-i'
Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]
-b Implies the -n option but doesn't count blank lines.
-e Implies the -v option and also prints a dollar sign (`$') at the end of each line.
-n Number the output lines, starting at 1.
-s Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be single spaced.
-t Implies the -v option and also prints tab characters as `^I'.
-u The output is guaranteed to be unbuffered (see setbuf(3)).
-v Displays non-printing characters so they are visible.
--help Print this help message
Ok, that was pretty easy. Now let's try to implement these functions!
Implementing cat[edit]
So now we have to map those abstract flag values to real behaviour. I'll start with the easy ones first.
If -u is set, we turn off all buffering. After that, we map a 'cat' function over each file. So the program's 'main' is just:
main = do
(args, files) <- getArgs >>= parse
when (Unbuffered `elem` args) $ hSetBuffering stdout NoBuffering
mapM_ (cat args) filesWhere 'cat' will process the files one at a time. 'cat' is where all the hard work is done.
Most of the operations the cat program does requires access to each line of the file. We also need to be able to handle the special file name, "-". What we'd like to do is separate out any IO, from operations on each file's content. To do this we'll write a higher order function, 'withFile', which takes a filename, opens it, splits it into lines and applies a function to the contents of the file, before writing the result to stdout:
withFile s f = putStr . unlines . f . lines =<< open s
where
open f = if f == "-" then getContents else readFile fNow we can implement the pure 'cat' function, implementing the cat program's functionality. Firstly, if there are no command line flags, the 'cat' function does nothing to the input:
cat [] f = withFile f idThat is, it applies the 'id' function to the stream generated by withFile. That was easy.
Now, if there are some arguments, we'll need to process them. This can be a little tricky, since the effect of the command line flags are cumulative, and we better process them in the right order. What is that order? Well, from experimentation :-) it seems that (if all flags are enabled) 'cat' proceed to:
- first squeeze any blank lines;
- then any visibility flags are processed;
- then line numbering occurs;
- then, finally, any visible newlines are printed as '$'.
The visibility flags transform non-printing characters into a visible representation. The key to coding this up is recognising that its just a functional pipeline. So we can write it as:
cat as f = withFile f (newline . number . visible as)Where 'visible' renders any non-printing chars. Then we number the resulting
lines (if the arguments are set), and then finally make any remaining newlines
visible. Note that the core of the algorithm does no IO. It's a pure function
from [String] -> [String]. Now the implementation of 'number':
where
number s = if Blanks `elem` as then numberSome s else ifset Number numberAll s
newline s = ifset Dollar (map (++"$")) s
visible as s = foldl' (flip render) s as
ifset a f = if a `elem` as then f else idHere we actually handle all the data traversal. And use a little helper function, 'ifset', to conditionally execute a function if the corresponding command line is set. Note that slight trickiness involving numbering: either we number all lines, or number the non blank lines, but not both.
'render', the function to print invisible characters, is just:
render Squeeze = map head. groupBy (\x y -> all (all isSpace) [x,y])
render Tabs = map $ concatMap (\c -> if c == '\t' then "^I" else [c])
render Invisible = map $ concatMap visible
where
visible c | c == '\t' || isPrint c = [c]
| otherwise = init . tail . show $ c
render _ = idAnd the numbering function:
numberLine = printf "%6d %s"
numberAll s = zipWith numberLine [(1 :: Integer)..] s
numberSome s = reverse . snd $ foldl' draw (1,[]) s
where
draw (n,acc) s
| all isSpace s = (n, s : acc)
| otherwise = (n+1, numberLine n s : acc)And we're done! In the end, our entire implementation is some 89 lines of code, of which 60 are to do with importing modules, or command line argument parsing. The actual heart of the program is fairly tiny in the end.
Let's run the code.
$ ghc -O Cat.hs -o cat
Check it actually prints its arguments:
$ ./cat Cat.hs | head import System.Console.GetOpt import System.IO import System.Exit import System.Environment import Data.List import Data.Char import Control.Monad import Text.Printf
main = do
Or multiple arguments:
$ ./cat Cat.hs /usr/share/dict/words | tail zymotoxic zymurgy Zyrenian Zyrian Zyryan zythem Zythia zythum Zyzomys Zyzzogeton
Does it number lines:
$ ./cat -n Cat.hs | tail
80
81 (_,_,errs) -> do
82 hPutStrLn stderr (concat errs ++ usageInfo header flags)
83 exitWith (ExitFailure 1)
84
85 where header = "Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]"
86
87 set Dollar = [Dollar, Invisible]
88 set Tabs = [Tabs, Invisible]
89 set f = [f]
What about non blank lines:
$ ./cat -b Cat.hs | tail
72 (_,_,errs) -> do
73 hPutStrLn stderr (concat errs ++ usageInfo header flags)
74 exitWith (ExitFailure 1)
75 where header = "Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]"
76 set Dollar = [Dollar, Invisible]
77 set Tabs = [Tabs, Invisible]
78 set f = [f]
How about some visibility flags:
$ cat -eb Cat.hs | tail
$
72 (_,_,errs) -> do$
73 hPutStrLn stderr (concat errs ++ usageInfo header flags)$
74 exitWith (ExitFailure 1)$
$
75 where header = "Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]"$
$
76 set Dollar = [Dollar, Invisible]$
77 set Tabs = [Tabs, Invisible]$
78 set f = [f]$
And turning on all the flags:
$ cat -bnvste Cat.hs | tail
$
72 (_,_,errs) -> do$
73 hPutStrLn stderr (concat errs ++ usageInfo header flags)$
74 exitWith (ExitFailure 1)$
$
75 where header = "Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]"$
$
76 set Dollar = [Dollar, Invisible]$
77 set Tabs = [Tabs, Invisible]$
78 set f = [f]$
Nice!
Summary[edit]
Well, in the end I didn't get on to exception handling, or the use of bytestring to improve performance further. However, we have implemented (95%) of the unix 'cat' program, including all argument handling and functionality, in about an hour and a half.
Once it typechecked, the code just worked, except for one bug where I originally rendered newline before counting lines (simply because the spec was underspecified). Lesson: you can start writing your unix scripts in Haskell right now. They'll be flexible, clean, and easy to maintain. And most of all, fun to write!
Hopefully next time we'll look into using bytestrings for processing larger volumes of data, and the use of exception handling to deal with unusual errors.
The complete source[edit]
And just for reference, there's the complete source:
import System.Console.GetOpt
import System.IO
import System.Exit
import System.Environment
import Data.List
import Data.Char
import Control.Monad
import Text.Printf
main = do
(args, files) <- getArgs >>= parse
when (Unbuffered `elem` args) $ hSetBuffering stdout NoBuffering
mapM_ (cat args) files
withFile s f = putStr . unlines . f . lines =<< open s
where
open f = if f == "-" then getContents else readFile f
cat [] f = withFile f id
cat as f = withFile f (newline . number . visible as)
where
number s = if Blanks `elem` as then numberSome s else ifset Number numberAll s
newline s = ifset Dollar (map (++"$")) s
visible as s = foldl' (flip render) s as
ifset a f = if a `elem` as then f else id
render Squeeze = map head. groupBy (\x y -> all (all isSpace) [x,y])
render Tabs = map $ concatMap (\c -> if c == '\t' then "^I" else [c])
render Invisible = map $ concatMap visible
where
visible c | c == '\t' || isPrint c = [c]
| otherwise = init . tail . show $ c
render _ = id
numberLine = printf "%6d %s"
numberAll s = zipWith numberLine [(1 :: Integer)..] s
numberSome s = reverse . snd $ foldl' draw (1,[]) s
where
draw (n,acc) s
| all isSpace s = (n, s : acc)
| otherwise = (n+1, numberLine n s : acc)
data Flag
= Blanks -- -b
| Dollar -- -e
| Squeeze -- -s
| Tabs -- -t
| Unbuffered -- -u
| Invisible -- -v
| Number -- -n
| Help -- --help
deriving (Eq,Ord,Enum,Show,Bounded)
flags =
[Option ['b'] [] (NoArg Blanks)
"Implies the -n option but doesn't count blank lines."
,Option ['e'] [] (NoArg Dollar)
"Implies the -v option and also prints a dollar sign (`$') at the end of each line."
,Option ['n'] [] (NoArg Number)
"Number the output lines, starting at 1."
,Option ['s'] [] (NoArg Squeeze)
"Squeeze multiple adjacent empty lines, causing the output to be single spaced."
,Option ['t'] [] (NoArg Tabs)
"Implies the -v option and also prints tab characters as `^I'."
,Option ['u'] [] (NoArg Unbuffered)
"The output is guaranteed to be unbuffered (see setbuf(3))."
,Option ['v'] [] (NoArg Invisible)
"Displays non-printing characters so they are visible."
,Option [] ["help"] (NoArg Help)
"Print this help message"
]
parse argv = case getOpt Permute flags argv of
(args,fs,[]) -> do
let files = if null fs then ["-"] else fs
if Help `elem` args
then do hPutStrLn stderr (usageInfo header flags)
exitWith ExitSuccess
else return (nub (concatMap set args), files)
(_,_,errs) -> do
hPutStrLn stderr (concat errs ++ usageInfo header flags)
exitWith (ExitFailure 1)
where header = "Usage: cat [-benstuv] [file ...]"
set Dollar = [Dollar, Invisible]
set Tabs = [Tabs, Invisible]
set f = [f]