Template Haskell
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Template Haskell is an experimental language extension to the programming language Haskell implemented in the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (version 6 and later).
In early incarnations it was also known as Template Meta-Haskell.
It allows compile-time metaprogramming and generative programming by means of manipulating abstract syntax trees and 'splicing' results back into a program. The abstract syntax is represented using ordinary Haskell data types and the manipulations are performed using ordinary Haskell functions.
'Quasi-quote' brackets [|
and |]
are used to get the abstract syntax tree for the enclosed expression and 'splice' brackets $(
and )
are used to convert from abstract syntax tree into code.
[edit] Example
A common idiom is to quasi-quote an expression, perform some transformation on the expression and splice the result back into the program. It could be written as:
foo = $( transform [| bar |] )