simpleargs: Provides a more flexible getArgs function with better error reporting.

SimpleArgs - provide a more flexible and informative replacement for getArgs 

For "real" command line programs, you usually want to provide a
flexible command line with various options and settings, sensibly
named and with auto-generated help.  In that case, SimpleArgs is not
for you, stop reading this, and look up System.Console.GetOpt
instead. 

But sometimes, a quick hack is just what you need.  Previously, you
were wont to do:

      main = do
      	   [count',gender'] <- getArgs
	   let count = read count
	   let gender = case gender' of 
	       	      	     "M" -> 'M'
			     "F" -> 'F'
	   main_real count gender

This is somewhat tedious, wastes precious sceen estate, users
supplying parameters of the wrong type will get obscure errors, and
while any programming errors you might introduce probably will be
trivial, it would be better to avoid them entirely.

The SimpleArgs module provides getArgs with an overloaded return type,
so that command line parameters are parsed as the types required by
the rest of the program.

Using SimpleArgs, the above could therefore look like this:

      main = do 
      	   (count,gender) <- getArgs
	   main_real count gender

or even (I think):

      main = getArgs >>= return . uncurry main_real

If that was a bit contrieved, let's say you just want to read a file
name:

     main = do
     	  [filename] <- getArgs
	  readFile filename >>= print . length 

I'm sure you could avoid the information-free name "filename" by some
esoteric tranformation to more point-free style, but I argue that
SimpleArgs makes this natural and easy:

     main = getArgs >>= readFile >>= print . length

I don't think 'wc -c' gets much easier than this.

Instead of reporting incomplete cases or read failures, SimpleArgs
will provide more sensible error reporting. (To try this, build Example
by executing 'ghc --make Example.hs').  It will:

      1) report incorrect number of parameters,
      	 also mentioning the expected parameters and types:

	  % ./Example foo
	  Example: Incorrect number of arguments, got 1,
	  expected 2 (Int,[Char])

	This also gives you a useful hint if you just run the program
	without any parameters.

      2) report parameters that fail to parse as the required type:

          % ./Example foo 10
 	  Example: Couldn't parse parameter "foo" as type Int

Nice, huh?  Please enjoy, and let me know how you fare at ketil@malde.org.