Adding split/split' to Data.List, and redefining words/lines with it; also, adding replace/replaceBy

[Neil Mitchell]

Hi

>  What do people think of adding these?

split is sorely lacking, and definately needs to be included. However,
my version is different to yours:

split :: Eq a => a -> [a] -> [[a]]
split x [] = []
split x xs = if null b then [a] else a : split x (tail b)
    where (a,b) = break (== x) xs

split '*' "hello*neil" = ["hello","neil"]

While with yours:

split '*' "hello*neil" = ["hello","*","neil"]

I much prefer mine.

Didn't the bytestring people add it, under some gise, to their
library? It should be consistent with that.

> and perhaps a better name for split'

A better name is essential. split' should be for the strict version of
split, not something quite different.


>  On a secondary note, but less important than the foregoing, I'd like to add two functions: 'replace' and 'replaceBy'. They do basically what they sound like: given two items, change every occurrence in a given list of one item to another.

I commonly define:

rep :: Eq a => a -> a -> a
rep from to x = if x == from then to else x

Now you can do replace with map rep.

Still, replace and replaceBy might be useful to have.

Thanks

Neil