On on (was: [GHC] #971: Add intercalate and split to Data.List)

[Jon Fairbairn]

On 2006-11-02 at 15:28+0100 Nils Anders Danielsson wrote:
> On Mon, 30 Oct 2006, Jón Fairbairn <jon.fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> > We can write “groupBy (\a b -> p a && p b)” [...]
> 
> You mean “groupBy ((&&) `on` p)”, right? ;)

Something very much like that!

> Do you consider on to be above or below the Fairbairn threshold, by
> the way?

Above. It's hard to articulate, but the reasons you give for
`on` seem about right, so long as on is defined at a general
enough type (and it's hard to beat forall a b c. (a -> a ->
b) -> (c -> a) -> c -> t -> b for generality!)
 

To explore this a bit further with a different example, I
would have been in favour of introducing

   (f >< g) (a, b) = (f a, f b)

but not 

   mapFst f (a, b) = (f a, b)

because the latter is simply (f >< id), which has a nice
"parallel" look to it; it seems easier to me to see that

   (f >< id) . (id >< g) = (f >< g)

than that

   mapFst f . mapSnd g = (f >< g)

Now, though, there's &&& in Control.Arrow, and that subsumes
><, so I'm nolonger enthusiastic about (><) (though I might
define it locally in circumstances where I think my readers
would be unfamiliar with &&&).

One of the considerations is that once you put a name into a
library, you'll have the devil's own job getting it out
again if you decide it was a mistake.


  Jón


-- 
Jón Fairbairn                              Jon.Fairbairn at cl.cam.ac.uk