Simple printing with Text. This is a prototype, not production code.

base             >= 4.6  && <4.10,
text             >= 1.2  && <1.3,
text-format      >= 0.3  && <0.4

Replaces the Prelude function show:

show :: Show a => a -> String

... with a new one that uses Text.

show :: Show a => a -> Text

A Text-based Show replacement can be derived with GHC's new -XDeriveAnyClass.

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveAnyClass #-}

data Animal 
  = Dog
  | Cat
  deriving (Generic, Print.Show)

GHCI's default printing mechanism can be overloaded by adding the following to your .ghci file. Anything typed at the console will then use the modern print function instead of the Prelude.

import Print
:set -interactive-print=Print.print

Stack (Recommended)

$ stack build
$ stack repl print:exe:Example

Cabal

$ cabal sandbox init
$ cabal install --only-dependencies
$ cabal build
$ cabal repl exe:Example