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What is it?

haskell-emacs is a library which allows the extension of Emacs using Haskell. It provides an FFI (Foreign Function Interface) for Haskell functions.

Examples

Melpa install haskell-emacs (if you choose to clone the repo directly, then you have to add the repo to your load-path, (require 'haskell-emacs)), and then run M-x haskell-emacs-init. After that, you’ll prompted to enter installation options. If you so choose, haskell-emacs will create the following demo library:

-- /home/foo/.emacs.d/haskell-fun/Matrix.hs
module Matrix where

import qualified Data.List as L

-- | Takes a matrix (a list of lists of ints) and returns its transposition.
transpose :: [[Int]] -> [[Int]]
transpose = L.transpose

-- | Returns an identity matrix of size n.
identity :: Int -> [[Int]]
identity n
  | n > 1 = L.nub $ L.permutations $ 1 : replicate (n-1) 0
  | otherwise = [[1]]

-- | Check whether a given matrix is a identity matrix.
isIdentity :: [[Int]] -> Bool
isIdentity xs = xs == identity (length xs)

-- | Compute the dyadic product of two vectors.
dyadic :: [Int] -> [Int] -> [[Int]]
dyadic xs ys = map (\x -> map (x*) ys) xs

Now you’re set to toy around with your new elisp functions:

(Matrix.identity 3)
  => ((1 0 0) (0 1 0) (0 0 1))

(Matrix.transpose '((1 2) (3 4) (5 6)))
  => ((1 3 5) (2 4 6))

(Matrix.isIdentity '((1 0) (0 1)))
  => t

(Matrix.dyadic '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6))
  => ((4 5 6) (8 10 12) (12 15 18))

Now consider some bad input:

(Matrix.identity "a")
  => Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "when expecting a Integral, encountered string instead")

(Matrix.transpose [(1 2) [3 4]])
  => ((1 3) (2 4))

(Matrix.dyadic '+)
  => Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "when expecting a pair, encountered symbol instead")

You see that type errors result in emacs errors with good descriptions therein. It is an error to pass a value to a Haskell function for which haskell-emacs cannot marshal to the correct type. Please keep in mind that Emacs Lisp Arrays will be translated (recursively) to Haskell lists and Emacs Lisp lists will be marshaled to either Haskell lists or Haskell tuples.

Note that if you modify Matrix.hs or add new files you have to rerun haskell-emacs-init. If you remove a function from a module or an entire module, the lisp function will still be bound untill the next restart of emacs but produce undefined behaviour.

Build tools

You can use your favorite build tool. Nix, stack and cabal are supported out of the box. If you don’t specify which one to use via haskell-emacs-build-tool it’ll try to guess your build tool and ask you when initializing.

Performance

There is a (very) small overhead calling Haskell functions, so for very trivial situations, elisp functions will be faster. On my laptop (i5-4210, 2.7Ghz) it costs the following:

• 0.07 ms per function call
• 0.0002 ms per sent or received char

Unless you use haskell functions on megabytes of text or in very tight loops (which wouldn’t be wise, transfer the whole task to haskell) the overhead is irrelevant.

Additionally, if you watch closely, Haskell functions will recursively fuse with any of its arguments which are Haskell functions so you can define Haskell functions that are quite modular and combine them on the lisp side and pay the overhead cost only once.

(Matrix.transpose (Matrix.transpose '((1 2) (3 4))))
   => ((1 2) (3 4))

(Matrix.transpose (identity (Matrix.transpose '((1 2) (3 4)))))
   => ((1 2) (3 4))

(let ((result (Matrix.transpose-async (Matrix.transpose '((1 2) (3 4))))))

  ;; other stuff

  (eval result))
   => ((1 2) (3 4))

In example above, the first and the third call are twice as fast as the second. In the second case, the identity function does nothing but prevent fusion of the Haskell functions. The result is the same, but the intermediate result must be sent over pipes back to emacs and from emacs back to Haskell. Obviously, fusing synchronous functions gives (huge) performance benefit, where the overhead is the performance bottleneck.

The third case is an async function (which can fuse as well) which returns a future without blocking Emacs. Evaluating the future will return the result of the computation, or block and wait if it isn’t already present. The ability to fuse is quite powerful, especially for async functions: You can glue together for example 4 costly computations which will execute all on the Haskell side without the need to manually block for intermediate results.

Considering big intermediate results (lets say an entire buffer), it’s possible that fused functions are orders of magnitude faster by omitting the performance costs per char.

Every branch of a fused function will be evaluated in parallel on multiple cores, so if you call a function asynchronously which takes as arguments three Haskell functions, your call will be evaluated on up to three cores in parallel and without blocking Emacs.

Documentation

Document your Haskell functions! The Haddock strings will be parsed and used as the documentation for the Emacs Lisp wrappers, so they are accessible from Emacs at all times. In any case, the Emacs docs (C-h f) will show the arity and the type of Haskell functions. Furthermore, it will indicate where the Haskell function is defined and you can jump directly to that file, just as with elisp functions. Thanks to a hack, Emacs actually thinks that they reside in an elisp function, which they obviously do not, so Emacs jumps to the top of the module where the Haskell function is defined.

; C-h f Matrix.transpose
Matrix\.transpose is a Lisp macro in `Matrix.hs'.

(Matrix\.transpose X1)

transpose :: [[Int]] -> [[Int]]

Takes a matrix (a list of lists of ints) and returns its transposition.

Unfortunately, Emacs doesn’t like dots in function names in the help buffer.

Dependencies

You’ll need:

• ghc
• cabal
• atto-lisp
• happy
• haskell-src-exts
• parallel
• utf8-string

Thats all. If you’ve got ghc and cabal, the rest will be installed automatically if you choose so during the setup dialog.

Foreign.Emacs

If you import Foreign.Emacs, you’ll have more advanced features at your finger tip:

data Emacs a
eval  :: [Lisp] -> Emacs a
eval_ :: [Lisp] -> Emacs ()

data Lisp = Symbol  Text
          | String  Text
          | Number  Number
          | List    [Lisp]
          | DotList [Lisp] Lisp

data Buffer = Buffer {text :: Text, point :: Int}
getBuffer    :: Emacs Buffer
putBuffer    :: Buffer -> Emacs ()
modifyBuffer :: (Buffer -> Buffer) -> Emacs ()

If a function returns a Lisp it will be evaluated by emacs. A function which takes a Lisp can perform arbitrary transformations on a Lisp. A function which returns the monad Emacs a will engage a dialog with emacs. If you call such a function asynchronously, it’ll interleave the dialog with emacs, but return a future which holds the result of the function. Note that when using eval you have to ensure that the type of the result is inferable, if you perform something only for it’s effects use eval_ instead.

In many cases it is the most efficient and elegant solution to write a function which transforms a buffer and apply it with modifyBuffer to emacs. In this scenario, you’ll pay only two times the communication costs and make all the calculations with pure and efficient haskell functions. This function respects narrowed buffers, if you want to work with the whole buffer, you have to widen it. It is not recommended to call effectful functions like modifyBuffer asynchronously because it could write the buffer content into another buffer if you change it while haskell is calculating.

Note that Emacs a is an instance of MonadIO, so if you’ve got dire need you can perform arbitrary IO with liftIO which will be performed sequentially in the Emacs a.

-- /home/foo/.emacs.d/haskell-fun/Test.hs
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
module Test where

import           Control.Monad
import qualified Data.List     as L
import qualified Data.Text     as T
import           Foreign.Emacs

forwardChar :: Int -> Lisp
forwardChar n = List [Symbol "forward-char", Number $ fromIntegral n]

lispType :: Lisp -> String
lispType (Number  _) = "Number"
lispType (String  _) = "String"
lispType (Symbol  _) = "Symbol"
lispType _           = "List"

genericTranspose :: [[Lisp]] -> [[Lisp]]
genericTranspose = L.transpose

-- This is fine: it will call forward-line, return the result (which
-- is an Int) to haskell which will discard the result and return to
-- emacs nil.
example1 :: Emacs ()
example1 = eval_ [Symbol "forward-line"]

-- This is fine: it will call forward-line, return the result (which
-- is an Int) to haskell which will return to emacs the resulting Int.
example2 :: Emacs Int
example2 = eval [Symbol "forward-line"]

-- This is fine: it will go n lines forward and bounce if it reaches
-- the end of the buffer.
example3 :: Int -> Emacs ()
example3 n = do x <- eval [Symbol "forward-line", Number $ fromIntegral n]
                eval_     [Symbol "forward-line", Number $ negate x]

-- This is fine: it is nearly the same as example3, if called
-- asynchronously, the returned lisp will be executed only when the
-- future is asked for.
example4 :: Int -> Emacs Lisp
example4 n = do x <- eval     [Symbol "forward-line", Number $ fromIntegral n]
                return $ List [Symbol "forward-line", Number $ negate x]

-- This is fine: a mutual recursion between haskell and emacs.
example5 :: Int -> Emacs ()
example5 n = do eval_ [Symbol "insert", String . T.pack $ show n]
                when (n > 0) $ example5 (n-1)

-- This is fine: nearly the same but ugly.
example6 :: Int -> Emacs Lisp
example6 n = do eval_ [Symbol "insert", String . T.pack $ show n]
                return $ if n > 0
                            then List [Symbol "Test.example6", Number $ fromIntegral (n-1)]
                            else List []

-- This is bad: at the moment, emacs monads aren't allowed to
-- interleave, this will result in a dead lock
example7 :: Int -> Emacs ()
example7 n = do eval_ [Symbol "insert", String . T.pack $ show n]
                eval_ $ if n > 0
                           then [Symbol "Test.example7", Number $ fromIntegral (n-1)]
                           else []

-- This is bad: it will call forward-line, return the result (which is
-- an Int) to haskell which will try parse the Int as a () resulting
-- in a runtime error.
example8 :: Emacs ()
example8 = eval [Symbol "forward-line"]

-- This is bad: ghc can't infer the type of the first eval and will
-- refuse to compile.
-- example9 :: Emacs ()
-- example9 = do eval  [Symbol "forward-line"]
--               eval_ [Symbol "forward-line"]

You can write type safe elisp if you compose small functions in the emacs monad with type signatures. You can try the following code which asks for every non empty line in your buffer if you want to comment it.

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
module Comment ( commentLines1
               , commentLines2
               , uncomment
               ) where

import           Control.Applicative
import           Control.Monad
import           Data.Char
import           Data.Maybe
import           Data.Text           (Text)
import qualified Data.Text           as T
import           Foreign.Emacs

data MajorMode = Haskell
               | EmacsLisp
               | Unknown deriving (Eq, Show)

majorMode :: Emacs MajorMode
majorMode = do Symbol x <- getVar "major-mode"
               return . toMajorMode $ x

toPrefix :: MajorMode -> Text
toPrefix Haskell   = "-- "
toPrefix EmacsLisp = "; "
toPrefix Unknown   = "# "

toMajorMode :: Text -> MajorMode
toMajorMode s = case s of
  "haskell-mode"    -> Haskell
  "emacs-lisp-mode" -> EmacsLisp
  _                 -> Unknown

yOrNP :: Text -> Emacs Bool
yOrNP s = eval [Symbol "y-or-n-p", String s]

insert :: Text -> Emacs ()
insert s = eval_ [Symbol "insert", String s]

getVar :: Text -> Emacs Lisp
getVar s = eval [Symbol "identity", Symbol s]

uncomment :: Emacs ()
uncomment = toPrefix <$> majorMode >>= modifyBuffer . strip

strip :: Text -> Buffer -> Buffer
strip p b = Buffer ( T.unlines
                   . map (fromMaybe <*> T.stripPrefix p)
                   . T.lines
                   $ text b
                   ) 1

-- implementation1

gotoChar :: Int -> Emacs ()
gotoChar n = eval_ [Symbol "goto-char", Number $ fromIntegral n]

forwardLine :: Int -> Emacs Int
forwardLine n = eval [Symbol "forward-line", Number $ fromIntegral n]

lookingAt :: Text -> Emacs Bool
lookingAt s = eval [Symbol "looking-at", String s]

commentLines1 :: Emacs ()
commentLines1 = do
  prefix <- toPrefix <$> majorMode
  let loop = do hasChr <- not <$> lookingAt "^ *$"
                when hasChr $ do ask <- yOrNP "Comment line?"
                                 when ask $ insert prefix
                notEof <- (/=1) <$> forwardLine 1
                when notEof loop
  gotoChar 0
  loop

-- implementation2

gotoLine :: Int -> Emacs ()
gotoLine n = eval_ [Symbol "goto-line", Number $ fromIntegral n]

notEmpty :: Text -> [Int]
notEmpty str = [n | (l,n) <- zip (T.lines str) [1..], not $ T.all isSpace l]

commentLines2 :: Emacs ()
commentLines2 = do prefix <- toPrefix <$> majorMode
                   ls     <- (notEmpty . text) <$> getBuffer
                   mapM_ (\x -> do gotoLine x
                                   ask <- yOrNP "Comment line?"
                                   when ask $ insert prefix) ls

uncomment strips one layer of comment prefixes from the buffer and puts point to the beginning of the buffer. Note that the function strip is entirely pure.

The implementation1 is more or less in an imperative style while the implementation2 is a lot more functional. Needless to say you should prefer the second one. If you check this file with liquid-haskell, it will complain about the first implementation because it isn’t provable that it will terminate. Additionally, the second implementation communicates less times with emacs resulting in a better performance (transfering one time the entire buffer is cheap). Assuming that one answers always with no, commentLines1 communicates with emacs:

• 3x per non-empty line
• 2x per empty line
• 2x per call

commentLines2 communicates with emacs:

• 2x per non-empty line
• 0x per empty line
• 2x per call

Let’s compare the performance using this readme.

(require 'cl)

(flet ((y-or-n-p (x) nil))
  (let ((result (mapcar (lambda (x) (car (benchmark-run 100 (eval (list x)))))
                        '(Comment.commentLines1
                          Comment.commentLines2))))
    (mapcar (lambda (x) (/ x (apply 'min result))) result)))

The first implementation takes 50% more time, even though the second has to transfer the whole buffer.

Note that in such a trivial case a function written in elisp would be faster (albeit a lot unsafer). A sophisticated function could take the buffer-string, parMap it and replace the old buffer-string.

Shortcomings

Not all types marshal across languages, if you write a function with an unknown type, haskell-emacs-init will signal an error with the output from GHC.

Higher-order functions aren’t supported at all, you can’t pass functions as arguments to Haskell functions in emacs.

Contribute

I highly encourage contributions of all sorts. If you notice a feature that doesn’t behave as you would like or simply doesn’t exist, let me know in an issue and I’ll respond ASAP!