[Haskell-beginners] Removing the biggest element from a list - maybe slow?

[Daniel Fischer]

On Monday 24 May 2010 15:49:35, matthew coolbeth wrote:
> It is linear time, implemented roughly as below
>
> delete z [] = []
> delete z (x:xs) =  if x=z then delete z xs else x:(delete z xs)
>

delete only deletes the first occurrence, so it's equivalent to

delete z (x:xs)
  | x == z    = xs
  | otherwise = x : delete z xs
delete _ [] = []

, it's O(index of z) thus.