Is there a way to use flags when searching with hoogle from ghci?

Question

How can I use the hoogle command line flags when using hoogle inside ghci? This obviously doesn't work: ``` ghci> :hoogle --count=5 Char -> Int Could not read as type Int, "5 Char -> Int" ```

Accepted Answer

You need to change your ghci.conf in order to do this. Assuming you did the steps described on haskell.org, your ghci.conf contains a line like

```
:def hoogle \x -> return $ ":!hoogle \"" ++ x ++ "\""
```

However, that line says that `:hoogle x` will be translated to `hoogle "x"`, which obviously won't work if you want to apply additional flags, such as `--count=5`.

You either need to remove the quotes around the argument, e.g.

```
:def hoogleP \x -> return $ ":!hoogle " ++ x
```

and use `:hoogleP --count=5 "Char -> Int"` or split the argument by hand into count and search query:

```
:def hoogleC \x -> return $ ":!hoogle --count="++(head.words $x)++" \"" ++ (unwords.tail.words $x) ++ "\""
```

The last version can be used as `:hoogleC 5 Char -> Int`.

Is there a way to use flags when searching with hoogle from ghci?

Solution

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