Record wildcards

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Posted on February 10, 2014 by Kwang Yul Seo
Tags: Haskell, record wildcards, language extension

Haskell record syntax is a bit verbose. For records with many fields, it is tiresome to write each field individually in a record pattern, as in

data C = C {a :: Int, b :: Int, c :: Int, d :: Int}

f (C {a = 1, b = b, c = c, d = d}) = b + c + d

Record wildcard syntax lets us use .. in a record pattern, which simplifies pattern f=f to f. The above pattern can be rewritten with record wildcards syntax

f (C {a = 1, ..}) = b + c + d

This simple example does not show the merit of record wildcards vividly. Let’s see a real world example. hs-java is a package written by Ilya V. Portnov, which provides data types for Java .class files format and functions to assemble/disassemble Java bytecode.

The datatype for a JVM class file is Class, which has many fields as in

data Class stage = Class {
  magic :: Word32,                         -- ^ Magic value: 0xCAFEBABE
  minorVersion :: Word16,
  majorVersion :: Word16,
  constsPoolSize :: Word16,                -- ^ Number of items in constants pool
  constsPool :: Pool stage,                -- ^ Constants pool itself
  accessFlags :: AccessFlags stage,        -- ^ See @JVM.Types.AccessFlag@
  thisClass :: Link stage B.ByteString,    -- ^ Constants pool item index for this class
  superClass :: Link stage B.ByteString,   -- ^ --/-- for super class, zero for java.lang.Object
  interfacesCount :: Word16,               -- ^ Number of implemented interfaces
  interfaces :: [Link stage B.ByteString], -- ^ Constants pool item indexes for implemented interfaces
  classFieldsCount :: Word16,              -- ^ Number of class fileds
  classFields :: [Field stage],            -- ^ Class fields
  classMethodsCount :: Word16,             -- ^ Number of class methods
  classMethods :: [Method stage],          -- ^ Class methods
  classAttributesCount :: Word16,          -- ^ Number of class attributes
  classAttributes :: Attributes stage      -- ^ Class attributes
  }

It is declared as an instance of Binary class for serialization. Its put method uses the record wildcards syntax not to repeat field names as in the following:

instance Binary (Class File) where
  put (Class {..}) = do
    put magic
    put minorVersion
    put majorVersion
    putPool constsPool
    put accessFlags
    put thisClass
    put superClass
    put interfacesCount
    forM_ interfaces put
    put classFieldsCount
    forM_ classFields put
    put classMethodsCount
    forM_ classMethods put
    put classAttributesCount
    forM_ (attributesList classAttributes) put

You can see the real difference by comparing this with a more verbose version which does not use record wildcards.

instance Binary (Class File) where
  put (Class {magic=magic, minorVersion=minorVersion, majorVersion=majorVersion, constsPool=constsPool, accessFlags=accessFlags, thisCla    ss=thisClass, superClass=superClass, interfacesCount=interfacesCount, interfaces=interfaces, classFieldsCount=classFieldsCount, classFie    lds=classFields, classMethodsCount=classMethodsCount, classMethods=classMethods, classAttributesCount=classAttributesCount, classAttributes=classAttributes}) = do
 ...