I need a (quick and dirty) way to get some representation of the type of a Haskell expression that is given as a string.
I currently see 3 options:
- Use GHC API -- however, the documentation loses me pretty quickly.
- Use some other type inference tool -- I've been suggested to try haskell-type-exts, but it fails to type all but the most trivial expressions. I don't know of any other such tool.
- Roll my own HM inferer -- I'd avoid this unless absolutely necessary
I don't even need a complete solution, in the sense that a library/tool that can type a reasonable basic subset of Haskell would well suffice for me.
So what is the simplest way to achieve this?
The
hint
package offers a somewhat restricted, but perhaps more understandable interface to the GHC API. Perhaps it is sufficient for your purposes? If not, you can perhaps look at the sources to get a better idea of how to use the GHC API directly.Here's an example program:
If run, this prints