Data.FiniteMap proposed addition, bug fix

[Graham Klyne]

At 23:35 09/11/04 +0100, Jean-Philippe Bernardy wrote:
>On Tue, 09 Nov 2004 15:22:53 +0000, Graham Klyne <gk at ninebynine.org> wrote:
> > At 13:06 09/11/04 +0000, Simon Marlow wrote:
> > >On 09 November 2004 12:45, Graham Klyne wrote:
> > >
> > > > I'd like to propose an addition to the FiniteMap module in the form
> > > > of a monadic version of plusFM_C.  The proposed implementation is
> > > > pretty much a copy of the existing implementation within a do block.
> > >
> > >Data.FiniteMap will shortly be deprecated in favour of DData.Map (which
> > >will be renamed to Data.Map when it is imported).  Perhaps you'd like to
> > >reformulate the proposal using Data.Map instead?
> >
> >
> > Proposed addition:
>[***]
>
>Ok, but in order to have a consistent interface, we'll need monadic
>versions of a lot of functions: there are Set, IntMap, IntSet types,
>and intersection, difference, etc. Might be a lot of work. A solution
>may be to make standard versions a special case of the monadic ones,
>still I wonder about performance issues.

I hadn't thought about that specifically, but I did think about other 
similar functions on Map values, and it raises questions of both utility 
and consistency.

My suggestion comes from a specific and real requirement in some software 
I'm writing.  Because the actual type is abstract (hidden), I can't do it 
externally to the module, other than by using several function calls to 
extract, merge, delete and re-insert elements, which doesn't seem desirable.

In this case, I decided to push for the particular function that I knew I 
wanted, and to not expend energy on other functions whose actual utility 
was uncertain.

FWIW, other candidate functions for this treatment that I see would be:
             , insertWith, insertWithKey, insertLookupWithKey
             , differenceWith
             , differenceWithKey
             , intersectionWith
             , intersectionWithKey
             , fromListWith
             , fromListWithKey
             , fromAscListWith
             , fromAscListWithKey

Hmmm, I also note:
             , mapAccum
             , mapAccumWithKey
and wonder why these aren't done with a monadic function?   It looks a bit 
like a state monad operation to me.

#g


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Graham Klyne
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