The more the merrier!

Mission failed successfully: I’m bringing my enby instead and you can’t stop me.

You could probably write a very basic parser combinator library, enough to parse JSON, in 100 lines of Haskell

I decided to write it myself for fun. I decided that “From Scratch” means:

• No parser libraries (parsec/happy/etc)
• No using read from Prelude
• No hacky meta-parsing

Here is what I came up with (using my favourite parsing method: parser combinators):

import Control.Monad ((>=>), replicateM)
import Control.Applicative (Alternative (..), asum, optional)
import Data.Maybe (fromMaybe)
import Data.Functor (($>))
import Data.List (singleton)
import Data.Map (Map, fromList)
import Data.Bifunctor (first, second)
import Data.Char (toLower, chr)

newtype Parser i o = Parser { parse :: i -> Maybe (i, o) } deriving (Functor)

instance Applicative (Parser i) where
  pure a = Parser $ \i -> Just (i, a)
  a <*> b = Parser $ parse a >=> \(i, f) -> second f <$> parse b i
instance Alternative (Parser i) where
  empty = Parser $ const Nothing
  a <|> b = Parser $ \i -> parse a i <|> parse b i
instance Monad (Parser i) where
  a >>= f = Parser $ parse a >=> \(i, b) -> parse (f b) i
instance Semigroup o => Semigroup (Parser i o) where
  a <> b = (<>) <$> a <*> b
instance Monoid o => Monoid (Parser i o) where
  mempty = pure mempty

type SParser = Parser String

charIf :: (a -> Bool) -> Parser [a] a
charIf cond = Parser $ \i -> case i of
  (x:xs) | cond x -> Just (xs, x)
  _ -> Nothing

char :: Eq a => a -> Parser [a] a
char c = charIf (== c)

one :: Parser i a -> Parser i [a]
one = fmap singleton

str :: Eq a => [a] -> Parser [a] [a]
str = mapM char

sepBy :: Parser i a -> Parser i b -> Parser i [a]
sepBy a b = (one a <> many (b *> a)) <|> mempty

data Decimal = Decimal { mantissa :: Integer, exponent :: Int } deriving Show

data JSON = Object (Map String JSON) | Array [JSON] | Bool Bool | Number Decimal | String String | Null deriving Show

whitespace :: SParser String
whitespace = many $ asum $ map char [' ', '\t', '\r', '\n']

digit :: Int -> SParser Int
digit base = asum $ take base [asum [char c, char (toLower c)] $> n | (c, n) <- zip (['0'..'9'] <> ['A'..'Z']) [0..]]

collectDigits :: Int -> [Int] -> Integer
collectDigits base = foldl (\acc x -> acc * fromIntegral base + fromIntegral x) 0

unsignedInteger :: SParser Integer
unsignedInteger = collectDigits 10 <$> some (digit 10)

integer :: SParser Integer
integer = asum [char '-' $> (-1), char '+' $> 1, str "" $> 1] >>= \sign -> (sign *) <$> unsignedInteger

-- This is the ceil of the log10 and also very inefficient
log10 :: Integer -> Int
log10 n
  | n < 1 = 0
  | otherwise = 1 + log10 (n `div` 10)

jsonNumber :: SParser Decimal
jsonNumber = do
  whole <- integer
  fraction <- fromMaybe 0 <$> optional (str "." *> unsignedInteger)
  e <- fromIntegral . fromMaybe 0 <$> optional ((str "E" <|> str "e") *> integer)
  pure $ Decimal (whole * 10^log10 fraction + signum whole * fraction) (e - log10 fraction)

escapeChar :: SParser Char
escapeChar = char '\\'
  *> asum [
    str "'" $> '\'',
    str "\"" $> '"',
    str "\\" $> '\\',
    str "n" $> '\n',
    str "r" $> '\r',
    str "t" $> '\t',
    str "b" $> '\b',
    str "f" $> '\f',
    str "u" *> (chr . fromIntegral . collectDigits 16 <$> replicateM 4 (digit 16))
  ]

jsonString :: SParser String
jsonString =
  char '"'
  *> many (asum [charIf (\c -> c /= '"' && c /= '\\'), escapeChar])
  <* char '"'

jsonObjectPair :: SParser (String, JSON)
jsonObjectPair = (,) <$> (whitespace *> jsonString <* whitespace <* char ':') <*> json

json :: SParser JSON
json =
  whitespace *>
    asum [
      Object <$> fromList <$> (char '{' *> jsonObjectPair `sepBy` char ',' <* char '}'),
      Array <$> (char '[' *> json `sepBy` char ',' <* char ']'),
      Bool <$> asum [str "true" $> True, str "false" $> False],
      Number <$> jsonNumber,
      String <$> jsonString,
      Null <$ str "null"
    ]
    <* whitespace

main :: IO ()
main = interact $ show . parse json

This parses numbers as my own weird Decimal type, in order to preserve all information (converting to Double is lossy). I didn’t bother implementing any methods on the Decimal, because there are other libraries that do that and we’re just writing a parser.

It’s also slow as hell but hey, that’s naive implementations for you!

It ended up being 113 lines. I think I could reduce it a bit more if I was willing to sacrifice readability and/or just inline things instead of implementing stdlib typeclasses.

From Scratch (as much as I like Rust, it’s very likely more verbose from scratch). Haskell is perfect for these kinds of things.

POV: Not all moms are accepting of their daughters being into girls.

But oh boy is it difficult. We started with Haskell in the first semester CS and it was a pain. Kudos to anyone seriously developing in Haskell.

There’s a rule?

Not anymore.

If she was around the same cs students as me then yeah

She sleeps with men, that’s pretty gay

Well yeah, obv. But not enough girls in computer science, so like the fishes, some of them magically turn into girls after a while.

“JSON parser 100% from scratch in Haskell in 110 lines” doesn’t get you horny? I guess some people are just wired differently.

Feels weird reading this as the only single woman programmer in my friend group who likes men

I think programmer should be seen as a gender itself.

I’m currently transitioning myself, already have a homeserver and a Linux PC, can’t wait to be a real programmer.