NAME¶

happy - the parser generator for Haskell

SYNOPSIS¶

happy [OPTION]... file [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION¶

This manual page documents briefly the happy command.

This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the original program does not have a manual page. Instead, it has documentation in various other formats, including DVI, Info and HTML; see below.

Happy is a parser generator system for Haskell. `HAPPY' is a dyslexic acronym for `A Yacc-like Haskell Parser generator'.

There are two types of grammar files, file.y and file.ly, with the latter observing the reverse comment bird track convention (i.e. each code line must begin with `>'). The examples distributed with Happy are all of the .ly form.

Caveat: When using hbc (Chalmers Haskell) the command argument structure is slightly different. This is because the hbc run time system takes some flags as its own (for setting things like the heap size, etc). This problem can be circumvented by adding a single dash (`-') to your command line. So when using a hbc generated version of Happy, the argument structure is:

happy - [OPTION]... file [OPTION]...

OPTIONS¶

The programs follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`--'). A summary of options is included below. For a complete description, see the other documentation.

-h, --help

Show summary of options.

-v, --version

Print version information on standard output then exit successfully.

-a, --array

Instructs Happy to generate a parser using an array-based shift reduce parser. When used in conjunction with -g, the arrays will be encoded as strings, resulting in faster parsers. Without -g, standard Haskell arrays will be used.

-g, --ghc

Instructs Happy to generate a parser that uses GHC-specific extensions to obtain faster code.

-c, --coerce

Use GHC's unsafeCoerce# extension to generate smaller faster parsers. One drawback is that some type safety is lost, which means that a parser generated with -c may compile fine but crash at run-time. Be sure to compile your grammar without -c first to ensure it is type-correct.

This option has quite a significant effect on the performance of the resulting parser, but remember that parsers generated this way can only be compiled by GHC 3.02 and above.

This option may only be used in conjunction with -g.

-d, --debug

Generate a parser that will print debugging information to stderr at run-time, including all the shifts, reductions, state transitions and token inputs performed by the parser.

This option may only be used in conjunction with -a.

-i [FILE], --info[=FILE]

Directs Happy to produce an info file containing detailed information about the grammar, parser states, parser actions, and conflicts. Info files are vital during the debugging of grammars.

The filename argument is optional, and if omitted the info file will be written to FILE.info (where FILE is the input file name with any extension removed).

-o FILE, --outfile=FILE

Specifies the destination of the generated parser module. If omitted, the parser will be placed in FILE.hs, where FILE is the name of the input file with any extension removed. If FILE is - the generated parser is sent to the standard output.

-m NAME, --magic-name=NAME

Happy prefixes all the symbols it uses internally with either happy or Happy. To use a different string, for example if the use of happy is conflicting with one of your own functions, specify the prefix using the -m option.

-t DIR, --template=DIR

Instructs Happy to use this directory when looking for template files: these files contain the static code that Happy includes in every generated parser. You shouldn't need to use this option if Happy is properly configured for your computer.

-l, --glr

Instructs Happy to output a GLR parser instead of an LALR(1) parser.

-k, --decode

Causes the GLR parser to generate code for decoding the parse forest to a list of semantic results (requires --ghc).

-f, --filter

Causes the GLR parser to filter out nodes which aren't required for the semantic results (an experimental optimisation, requires --ghc).

FILES¶

@LIBDIR@

SEE ALSO¶

@DOCDIR@, the Happy homepage (http://haskell.org/happy/)

COPYRIGHT¶

Happy Version @VERSION@

Copyright (c) 1993-1996 Andy Gill, Simon Marlow; (c) 1997-2001 Simon Marlow

AUTHOR¶

This manual page was written by Michael Weber <michaelw@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).