What's more idiomatic in Haskell?

Question

I'm writing the data structures for my program (a toy compiler), and I'm trying to understand what's the best way to define the AST:

Current code

data RExpr = RExpr Location InnerRExpr
data InnerRExpr = RLExpr LExpr | RConstant Constant | RMathExpr MathExpr | FCall Id [RExpr]

Alternative A

data RExpr = RLExpr Location LExpr
 | RConstant Location Constant
 | RMathExpr Location MathExpr
 | FCall Location Id [RExpr]

Alternative B

data RExpr = RLExpr { loc::Location, getLexpr::LExpr}
 | RConstant { loc::Location, getConstant::Constant}
 | RMathExpr { loc::Location, getExpr::MathExpr}
 | FCall { loc::Location, id::Id, params::[RExpr] }

Honestly I'm not satisfied with either of the three options, because the current code means that I have an extraneous object in the AST which doesn't really mean anything, alternative A means that I have to pattern match every time I want to extract the location (or write a boilerplate function that does it) and alternative B means cluttering the global namespace with functions whose names are likely to collide.

Suggestions?

Answer 1

I tend towards the former, and then use a lens or traversal to extract the location.

import Control.Lens
class HasLocation t where
 loc :: Lens' t Location
instance HasLocation RExpr where
 loc f (RLExpr l e) = f l <&> \l' -> RLExpr l' e
 loc f (RConstant l c) = f l <&> \l' -> RConstant l' c
 loc f (RMathExpr l m) = f l <&> \l' -> RMathExpr l' m
 loc f (FCall l i xs) = f l <&> \l' -> FCall l' i xs

With the class you can overload the use of loc for other data types. Because it is a lens you can use it to get/set/modify the location with a large vocabulary without cluttering your namespace.

• miniBill: Control.Lens... never heard of it. I'll look it up, thanks
• miniBill: I knew I was reinventing the wheel! I had a (specialization of) lenses in my code already. Cleaning up and using lenses, thank you very much