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haskellabstract-syntax-treepretty-print

Pretty Printing Syntax Tree with Operator Precedence and Associativity in Haskell


Is there any commonly used method or even a library for pretty printing (and parsing) a syntax tree with (binary) operators that have an associativity and a precedence level assigned, so that the result uses as few brackets as possible?


Take the formulas of propositional calculus as an example:

data Formula
    = Atom String
    | Not (Formula)
    | And (Formula) (Formula)
    | Or (Formula) (Formula)
    | Imp (Formula) (Formula) 

Assume that the precedence is Imp < Or < And < Not (so Not binds the most) and that And, Or and Imp should associate to the right; so for example Imp (And (Imp (Atom "A") (Atom "B")) (Atom "A")) (Atom "B") should print something like (A -> B) /\ A -> B.


Of course this could be achieved by pattern matching but this is tedious and very unpleasant; I'm looking for something similarly simple to this notation from the Coq proof assistant:

Notation "A /\ B" := (and A B) (at level 80, right associativity).

which generates a parser and a pretty printer.


Solution

  • A Show instance for Formula might look like this:

    instance Show Formula where
      showsPrec _ (Atom name) = showString name
      showsPrec p (Not formula) = showParen (p > 3) $
        showString "\\+ " . showsPrec 3 formula
      showsPrec p (And lhs rhs) = showParen (p > 2) $
        showsPrec 3 lhs . showString " /\\ " . showsPrec 2 rhs
      showsPrec p (Or lhs rhs) = showParen (p > 1) $
        showsPrec 2 lhs . showString " \\/ " . showsPrec 1 rhs
      showsPrec p (Imp lhs rhs) = showParen (p > 0) $
        showsPrec 1 lhs . showString " -> " . showsPrec 0 rhs
    

    Which will allow any Formula to be shown with appropriate parens:

    main = print $ Imp (And (Imp (Atom "A") (Atom "B")) (Atom "A")) (Atom "B")
    

    Prints (print is putStrLn . show):

    (A -> B) /\ A -> B