Writing Parser for S Expressions - parsing

Question

I'm trying to write a Parser for S Expressions from Prof. Yorgey's 2013 homework.
newtype Parser a = Parser { runParser :: String -> Maybe (a, String) }
Given the following definitions, presented in the homework:
type Ident = String
-- An "atom" is either an integer value or an identifier.
data Atom = N Integer | I Ident
deriving Show
-- An S-expression is either an atom, or a list of S-expressions.
data SExpr = A Atom
| Comb [SExpr]
deriving Show
I wrote a parser for Parser Atom and Parser SExpr for A Atom.
parseAtom :: Parser Atom
parseAtom = alt n i
where n = (\_ z -> N z) <$> spaces <*> posInt
i = (\ _ z -> I z) <$> spaces <*> ident
parseAAtom :: Parser SExpr
parseAAtom = fmap (\x -> A x) parseAtom
Then, I attempted to write a parser to handle a Parser SExpr for the Comb ... case:
parseComb :: Parser SExpr
parseComb = (\_ _ x _ _ _ -> x) <$> (zeroOrMore spaces) <*> (char '(') <*>
(alt parseAAtom parseComb) <*> (zeroOrMore spaces)
<*> (char ')') <*> (zeroOrMore spaces)
Assuming that parseComb was right, I could simply make usage of oneOrMore for Parser [SExpr].
parseCombElements :: Parser [SExpr]
parseCombElements = oneOrMore parseComb
So, my two last functions compile, but running runParser parseComb "( foo )" never terminates.
What's wrong with my parseComb definition? Please don't give me the whole answer, but rather a hint - for my own learning.

Answer 1

I am very suspicious of zeroOrMore spaces, because spaces is usually a parser which itself parses zero or more spaces. Which means that it can parse the empty string if there aren't any spaces at that point. In particular, the spaces parser always succeeds.
But when you apply zeroOrMore to a parser that always succeeds, the combined parser will never stop - because zeroOrMore only stops trying again once its parser argument fails.
As an aside, Applicative expressions like (\_ _ x _ _ _ -> x) <$> ... <*> ... <*> ...... which only use a single of the subparsers can usually be written more succinctly with the *> and <* combinators:
... *> ... *> x_parser_here <* ... <* ...