Haskell
Haskell is a functional programming langauge used in Cardano.
Contents
Getting Started
Install the Haskell platform with:
sudo apt-get install haskell-platform
Then run the interpreter via:
ghci
Quitting the Haskell interpreter is the same as vim: :q or :quit.
You can write Haskell in .hs files then compile using ghc like so:
ghc -o hello hello.hs
And then you can run via the executable file ./hello.
Types
Haskell allows you to define types but this is optional if no type is declared it will infer the type. Types in Haskell must start with a capital letter.
5 -- Infers the type
5 :: Double -- Define the type.
-- Ask ghci what type '5' is.
:t 5
The unit type () is a type that has only one value () which is similar to void in other languages.
You can combine types easily in one of two ways: Tuples and Lists. Lists hold many values of the same type whereas Tuples can hold values of different types.
[1, 2, 3] -- Simple list with the values 1 to 3.
[1 .. 5] -- List with the values 1 to 5
[1, 3 .. 10] -- List of odd values between 1 and 10.
['H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o'] -- A String!
(1, true) -- Simple Tuple.
(1, True, 2.0, 2) -- A longer Tuple
zip [1 .. 5] ['a' .. 'e'] -- Combine the two lists into a list of tuples: [(1, 'a'), (2, 'b') ...]
map (+ 2) [1 .. 5] -- Map function on a list: [3,4,5,6,7]
filter (> 2) [1 .. 5] -- Filter function on a list: [3,4,5]
fst (1, 2) -- Get the first element of the Tuple.
snd (1, 2) -- Get the second element of the Tuple.
map fst [(1, 2), (3, 4), (5, 6)] -- Apply the first function to each tuple in the list: [1,3,5].
Functions
inc x = x+1 -- Define an increment function.
add x y = x + y -- Define an addition function that takes two parameters.
(\x -> \y -> x+y) 1 2 -- Lambda version of add taking 1 & 2 as it's parameters.
You can also give types to your functions:
inc :: Int -> Int -- inc is a function that takes an Int and outputs an Int.
inc x = x+1
add :: Int -> Int -> Int -- inc is a function that takes two Ints as parameters and outputs an Int.
add x y = x + y
-- Define the factorial function in parts using pattern matching.
fact :: Int -> Int
fact 0 = 1
fact n = n * fact ( n - 1 )
-- Define the factorial function using guards, guards are like piecewise functions in mathematics.
fact :: Integer -> Integer
fact n | n == 0 = 1
| n /= 0 = n * fact (n-1)
-- You can split a complicated function into parts using 'where'
roots :: (Float, Float, Float) -> (Float, Float)
roots (a,b,c) = (x1, x2) where
x1 = e + sqrt d / (2 * a)
x2 = e - sqrt d / (2 * a)
d = b * b - 4 * a * c
e = - b / (2 * a)
-- Haskell allows you to do function composition with the '.' operator.
composedFunc = outer.inner -- outer and inner are functions.
-- composedFunc will compute the inner function then pass the return value to the outer function, compute that and return.
-- Note: the return value from inner needs to match that of the parameter value of outer.
In Haskell you can have conceptually infinite functions!
numsFrom n = n : numsFrom (n+1) -- A list of all numbers (n -> Infinity) from the argument.
squares = map (^2) (numsFrom 0) -- A list of all squares of the positive integers.
fib = 1 : 1 : [ a+b | (a,b) <- zip fib (tail fib) ] -- The list of all Fibonacci numbers!
Infinite functions are cool, but you will probably want to get a finite sample from them:
take 10 fib -- The first 10 Fibonacci numbers.
filter (< 100) (take 30 fib) -- All Fib numbers less than 100.
filter odd (filter (<300) (take 30 fib)) -- All odd Fib numbers less than 300.
Parallel Programming
You can write multi-threaded or parallel programs using the parallel library, you can install a library like so:
cabal install --lib parallel
import Control.Parallel
main = a `par` b `par` c `pseq` print (a + b + c)
where
a = ack 3 10
b = fac 42
c = fib 34
fac 0 = 1
fac n = n * fac (n-1)
ack 0 n = n+1
ack m 0 = ack (m-1) 1
ack m n = ack (m-1) (ack m (n-1))
fib 0 = 0
fib 1 = 1
fib n = fib (n-1) + fib (n-2)
./parallel -N3 # Use 3 cores.
Modules
You can split Haskell code with modules. Each module must be in a Haskell file with the same name:
Custom.hs
module Custom (
showEven,
showBoolean
) where
showEven:: Int-> Bool
showEven x = do
if x `rem` 2 == 0
then True
else False
showBoolean :: Bool->Int
showBoolean c = do
if c == True
then 1
else 0
main.hs
import Custom
main = do
print(showEven 4)
print(showBoolean True)
Custom Types
Data
-- Create the custom data type Shape that extends Show (so that print will output something)
data Shape = Circle Float Float Float
| Rectangle Float Float Float Float
deriving (Show)
-- A function for calculating the surface area.
surface :: Shape -> Float
surface (Circle _ _ r) = pi * r ^ 2
surface (Rectangle x1 y1 x2 y2) = (abs $ x2 - x1) * (abs $ y2 - y1)
-- Another custom data type with a different format.
data Animal = Animal {
name :: String,
legCount :: Int,
height :: Float
} deriving (Show)
main = do
print (surface $ Circle 10 20 10)
print (Circle 10 20 10)
let cow = Animal "Cow" 4 1.6
-- Here we can output a specific value of our type.
print (height cow)
Type
Types is a way to alias a name with another type.
-- Define PhoneNumber as the type String
type PhoneNumber = String
type Name = String
-- Define PhoneBook as the type of a list of tuples containing types Name and PhoneNumber
type PhoneBook = [(Name,PhoneNumber)]
-- Create a variable with type PhoneBook
phoneBook :: PhoneBook
phoneBook =
[
("name 1", "number 1"),
("name 2", "number 2")
]