Cleaner Alternative to Extensive Pattern Matching in Haskell

Question

Right now, I have some code that essentially works like this:

data Expression 
    = Literal Bool 
    | Variable String
    | Not Expression 
    | Or Expressio         


        

Answer 1

You could write a generic simplifier for all binary operations:

simplifyBinWith :: (Bool -> Bool -> Bool) -- the boolean operation
                -> (Expression -> Expression -> Expression) -- the constructor
                -> Expression -> Expression -- the two operands
                -> Expression) -- the simplified result
simplifyBinWith op cons a b = case (simplify a, simplify b) of
    (Literal x, Literal y) -> Literal (op x y)
    (Literal x, b')        -> tryAll (x `op`) b'
    (a',        Literal y) -> tryAll (`op` y) a'
    (a',        b')        -> cons a' b'
  where
    tryAll f term = case (f True, f False) of -- what would f do if term was true of false
      (True,  True)  -> Literal True
      (True,  False) -> term
      (False, True)  -> Not term
      (False, False) -> Literal False

That way, your simplify function would become

simplify :: Expression -> Expression
simplify (Not e)   = case simplify e of
    (Literal b) -> Literal (not b)
    e'          -> Not e'
simplify (And a b) = simplifyBinWith (&&) And a b
simplify (Or a b)  = simplifyBinWith (||) Or a b
simplify t         = t

and could be easily extended to more binary operations. It would also work well with the Binary Op Expression Expression idea, you'd pass Op instead of an Expression constructor to simplifyBinWith and the pattern in simplify could be generalised:

simplify :: Expression -> Expression
simplify (Not e)         = case simplify e of
    (Literal b) -> Literal (not b)
    e'          -> Not e'
simplify (Binary op a b) = simplifyBinWith (case op of
    And -> (&&)
    Or -> (||)
    Xor -> (/=)
    Implies -> (<=)
    Equals -> (==)
    …
  ) op a b
simplify t               = t
  where
    simplifyBinWith f op a b = case (simplify a, simplify b) of
      (Literal x, Literal y) -> Literal (f x y)
      …
      (a',        b')        -> Binary op a' b'