C-style enum in Haskell?

Question

In C, we define enum this way:

enum E {
    E0,
    E1,
    E2 = 3,
    E3
};

Note E2 = 3 expression, the enum type result in E0 == 0, E1 == 1, E2 == 3, E3 == 4.

In Haskell, we have no way to specify the enumeration in the declaration. The only way to implement discontinuous enumeration is implementing Enum class manually.

Is there any convenient way to do this?

I've write a demo using Template Haskell to generate the Enum instance.

data E = E0
       | E1
       | E2_3
       | E3
       deriving Show

enum ''E

I wonder if there are libraries trying to fill this gap?

@Franky, I'm trying to parse an binary file, generated by a program written in C. — wenlong

Cactus Cactus · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-06T09:50:19

You can whip up something small & simple using Template Haskell's reifyAnnotations feature.

First, we need to define an annotation type to hold enum values:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveDataTypeable #-}
module Def where

import Data.Data

data EnumValue = EnumValue Int deriving (Typeable, Data)

Second, we need a bit of TH code to consume these annotations and turn them into Enum instance definitions:

{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell, QuasiQuotes #-}
module TH where

import Def
import Language.Haskell.TH.Syntax
import Language.Haskell.TH
import Control.Monad
import Data.List (mapAccumL)
import Data.Maybe

enumValues :: [(a, Maybe Int)] -> [(a, Int)]
enumValues = snd . mapAccumL (\next (x, mv) -> let v = fromMaybe next mv in (v+1, (x, v))) 0

enumFromAnns :: Name -> Q [Dec]
enumFromAnns name = do
    TyConI (DataD _ _ _ cons _) <- reify name
    eVals <- fmap enumValues $ forM cons $ \(NormalC conName []) -> do
        anns <- reifyAnnotations (AnnLookupName conName)
        let ev = case anns of
                [EnumValue ev] -> Just ev
                [] -> Nothing
        return (conName, ev)
    [d|
     instance Enum $(conT name) where
       fromEnum = $(lamCaseE [match (conP c []) (normalB $ lift v) [] | (c, v) <- eVals])
       toEnum =  $(lamCaseE [match (litP . IntegerL . fromIntegral $ v) (normalB $ conE c) [] | (c, v) <- eVals])|]

And then finally we can use it (via a small workaround to make sure the usage is in a new declaration group):

{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-}
module AnnotatedEnumExample where

import Def
import TH

data E = E1
       | E2
       | E42
       | E43
       deriving Show

{-# ANN E1 (EnumValue 1) #-}
{-# ANN E42 (EnumValue 42) #-}

-- Force new declaration group
return []

enumFromAnns ''E

Example usage:

*AnnotatedEnumExample> map fromEnum [E1, E2, E42, E43]
[1,2,42,43]
*AnnotatedEnumExample> map toEnum [1, 2, 42, 43] :: [E]
[E1,E2,E42,E43]

C-style enum in Haskell?

1 Answers