Important detail, I am using Haskell (NOT CABAL) on repl.it. I would like to print a custom Haskell datatype that I created. I was thinking of an approach similar to Python's __repr__
or __str__
methods, when creating a new class. Something like:
class Length:
def __init__(self, value, unit_of_measurement):
self.value = value
self.unit_of_measurement = unit_of_measurement
def __str__(self):
return f'{self.value}{self.unit_of_measurement}'
def __repr__(self):
return self.__str__()
Which will produce the following:
>>> # I can print a custom representation of the object
>>> l = Length(10, 'cm')
>>> l
10cm
>>> print(l)
10cm
I am trying to instantiate the Show
class in my custom datatype and use pattern matching to customize the output that will be sent to the console.
-- This works fine
data Length = Length {value :: Double, unit_of_measurement :: String}
deriving (Eq, Ord) -- I don't want to use default Show inheritance
-- These lines are actually wrong, but I don't know how to solve this
-- Also, how to get the fields declared in my datatype???
instance Show Length where -- Or IO, I am not sure
print Length = print $ show value ++ unit_of_measurement
Ignoring the wrong lines that I mentioned (so the compiler won't stop the execution) and considering I have used Haskell's built-in inheritance mechanism with Show
(deriving(Show)
) this will be the result, (which I don't like):
位> :load Main.hs
[1 of 1] Compiling Main ( Main.hs, interpreted )
Ok, one module loaded.
位> let test = Length 10 "cm"
位> test
Length {value = 10.0, unit_of_measurement = "cm"} -- HERE 馃槫, THIS IS THE PROBLEM
I understand if it is not possible to do exactly what I want, but, is there any way to do something near this, or similar? Thanks in advance!
The method of the Show
typeclass is called show
, not print
. You'll need to remove the call to print
. The show
function must return a plain String
, not an IO ()
.
To pattern match on a record as you have it, you can enable the RecordWildCards
language extension by declaring it at the very top of the file, and then in the function definition use Length{..}
to pattern match and bring all the fields of the record into scope.
{-# LANGUAGE RecordWildCards #-}
data Length = Length {value :: Double, unit_of_measurement :: String}
deriving (Eq, Ord)
instance Show Length where
show Length{..} = show value ++ unit_of_measurement
Without that language extension, you could access the record fields in a few other ways:
show Length{value=v, unit_of_measurement=u} = show v ++ u
show (Length v u) = show v ++ u
show l = show (value l) ++ unit_of_measurement l