Simple debugging in Haskell

Question

I am new to Haskell. Previously I have programmed in Python and Java. When I am debugging some code I have a habit of littering it with print statements in the midd

Answer 1

I really liked Dons short blog about it: https://donsbot.wordpress.com/2007/11/14/no-more-exceptions-debugging-haskell-code-with-ghci/

In short: use ghci, example with a program with code called HsColour.hs

 $ ghci HsColour.hs
    *Main> :set -fbreak-on-exception
    *Main> :set args "source.hs"

Now run your program with tracing on, and GHCi will stop your program at the call to error:

 *Main> :trace main
    Stopped at (exception thrown)

Ok, good. We had an exception… Let’s just back up a bit and see where we are. Watch now as we travel backwards in time through our program, using the (bizarre, I know) “:back” command:

  [(exception thrown)] *Main> :back
    Logged breakpoint at Language/Haskell/HsColour/Classify.hs:(19,0)-(31,46)
    _result :: [String]

This tells us that immediately before hitting error, we were in the file Language/Haskell/HsColour/Classify.hs, at line 19. We’re in pretty good shape now. Let’s see where exactly:

 [-1: Language/Haskell/HsColour/Classify.hs:(19,0)-(31,46)] *Main> :list
    18  chunk :: String -> [String]
        vv
    19  chunk []    = head []
    20  chunk ('\r':s) = chunk s -- get rid of DOS newline stuff
    21  chunk ('\n':s) = "\n": chunk s
                                       ^^