Hi David, What you are wanting to do is query and transform a reasonably large AST. Fortunately there are solutions, generic programming should do exactly what you want without too much hassle. I'd personally recommend taking a look at the Uniplate library, starting by reading the Haskell Workshop 2007 paper (its an academic paper, but for you the really useful stuff is in Section 2 which is more tutorial style) - http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/uniplate/
I'm sure I could solve your particular queries using Uniplate, but I'll leave it for you to take a look and figure out. If you can't figure out how to do it after reading section 2 of the paper mail back and I'll take a closer look. Thanks Neil 2009/3/3 David Miani <davidmi...@gmail.com>: > Hi, > I'm working on a Haskell library for interacting with emacs org files. For > those that do not know, an org file is a structured outline style file that > has nested headings, text, tables and other elements. For example: > > * Heading 1 > Some text, more text. This is a subelement of Heading 1 > 1. You can also have list > 1. and nested lists > 2. more... > > ** Nested Heading (subelement of Heading 1) > text... (subelement of Nested Heading) > > ** Another level 2 heading (subelement of Heading 1) > | Desc | Value | > |-----------+--------------------------------------| > | Table | You can also have tables in the file | > | another | row | > | seperator | you can have seps as well, eg | > |-----------+--------------------------------------| > > * Another top level heading > There are many more features, see orgmode.org > > My library enables read and write access to a subset of this format (eg > lists aren't parsed atm). > > The data structures used for writing are: > > data OrgFile = OrgFile [OrgFileElement] > data OrgFileElement = Table OrgTable > | Paragraph String > | Heading OrgHeading > > -- heading level, title, subelements > data OrgHeading = OrgHeading Int String [OrgFileElement] > > data OrgTable = OrgTable [OrgTableRow] > > data OrgTableRow = OrgTableRow [String] | OrgTableRowSep > > > To write a file you contruct a OrgFile out of those elements, and pass it to > a writeOrgFile func. Eg: > > writeOrg $ OrgFile [Heading (OrgHeading 1 "h1" [Paragraph "str"])] > would produce: > * h1 > str > > I was going to use the same data structures for reading an org file, but it > quickly became apparent that this would not be suitable, as you needed the > position of the file of an element to be able to report errors. Eg if you > needed to report an error that a number was expected, the message "'cat' is > not a number" is not very useful, but "Line 2031: 'cat' is not a number" is. > So the data structures I used were: > > data FilePosition = FilePosition Line Column > > data WithPos a = WithPos { > filePos :: FilePosition, > innerValue :: a > } > > data OrgTableP = OrgTableP [WithPos OrgTableRow] > > data OrgFileElementP = TableP OrgTableP > | ParagraphP String > | HeadingP OrgHeadingP > > data OrgHeadingP = OrgHeadingP Int String [WithPos OrgFileElementP] > > data OrgFileP = OrgFileP [WithPos OrgFileElementP] > > > Finally there is a function readOrg, which takes a string, and returns an > OrgTableP. > > > Now, this all works as expected (files are correctly being parsed and > written), however I am having a lot of trouble trying to come up with a > decent API to work with this. While writing an OrgFile is fairly easy, > reading (and accessing inner parts) of an org file is very tedious, and > modifying them is horrendous. > > For example, to read the description line for the project named "Project14" > in the file: > > * 2007 Projects > ** Project 1 > Description: 1 > Tags: None > ** Project 2 > Tags: asdf,fdsa > Description: hello > * 2008 Projects > * 2009 Projects > ** Project14 > Tags: RightProject > Description: we want this > > requires the code: > > type ErrorS = String > listToEither str [] = Left str > listToEither _ (x:_) = Right x > > get14 :: OrgFileP -> Either ErrorS String > get14 (OrgFileP elements) = getDesc =<< (getRightProject . concatProjects) > elements where > concatProjects :: [WithPos OrgFileElementP] -> [OrgHeadingP] > concatProjects [] = [] > concatProjects ((WithPos _ (HeadingP h)) : rest) = h : concatProjects rest > concatProjects (_ : rest) = concatProjects rest > > getRightProject :: [OrgHeadingP] -> Either ErrorS OrgHeadingP > getRightProject = listToEither "Couldn't find project14" . > filter (\(OrgHeadingP _ name _) -> name == "Project14") > > getDesc :: OrgHeadingP -> Either ErrorS String > getDesc (OrgHeadingP _ _ children) = > case filter paragraphWithDesc (map innerValue children) of > [] -> Left $ show (filePos $ head children) ++ > ": Couldn't find desc in project" > ((ParagraphP str):_) -> Right str > _ -> error "should not be possible" > > paragraphWithDesc :: OrgFileElementP -> Bool > paragraphWithDesc (ParagraphP str) = str =~ "Description" > paragraphWithDesc _ = False > > > If you think that is bad, try writing a function that adds the Tag "Hard" to > Project2 :( > > What I really need is a DSL that would allow sql like queries on an > OrgFileP. For example: > select (anyHeading `next` > headingWithName "Project14" `withFailMsg` "couldn't find p14" `next` > paragraphMatchingRegex "Description" `withFailMsg` "no desc") > org `output` paragraphText > > would return a String > OR > select (anyHeading `next` headingWithName "Project2" `next` > paragraphMatchingRegex "Tag:") org `modify` paragraphText (++ ",Hard") > > would return an OrgFile, with the new Hard tag added. > > However, I don't know if this is even possible, how to do it, or if there is > a better alternative to this. I would really apreciate any hints with > regards to this. It would be useful to know if there are other libraries > that also face this problem, and how they solved it. > > Finally, I would be grateful for any other advice regarding my code. One > thing that has bugged me is my solution for having file position info - my > solution never seemed very elegant. > > Thanks, > David > > > > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > > _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe