[Haskell-cafe] generalized list comprehensions

[Andrew Coppin]

Duncan Coutts wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-11-09 at 19:18 +0000, Andrew Coppin wrote:
>   
>>
>> Generalised? Heck, I don't use list comprehension at all! :-P
>>     
>
> Perhaps you should! :-)
>
> When I first started with Haskell I kind of had the idea that list
> comprehensions were just for beginners and that 'real' hackers used just
> concatMaps and filters.
>
> A couple years later I 'rediscovered' list comprehensions and I now use
> them frequently. There are many cases in real programs where simple and
> not-so-simple list comprehensions are the clearest way of expressing the
> solution. In particular the easy support for refutable pattern matching
> in the generators allows some succinct and clear code.
>   

I don't actually use *lists* all that much - or at least not list 
transformations. And if I'm going to do something complicated, I'll 
usually write it as a do-expression rather than a comprehension.

> Just a random example out of Cabal:
>
> warn verbosity $
>      "This package indirectly depends on multiple versions of the same "
>   ++ "package. This is highly likely to cause a compile failure.\n"
>   ++ unlines [ "package " ++ display pkg ++ " requires "
>             ++ display (PackageIdentifier name ver)
>              | (name, uses) <- inconsistencies
>              , (pkg, ver) <- uses ]
>
> Pretty concise and clear I think.
>   

Erm... yeah, it's not too bad once I change all the formatting to make 
it clear what's what.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier as a do-block though?