[Haskell-cafe] Set of reals...?

[Glynn Clements]

Stijn De Saeger wrote:

> Now, for unions I tried the following: 
> to take the union of two BasicSets, just append them and contract the result.
> contracting meaning: merge overlapping intervals.
> 
> > contract :: Range -> Range -> BasicSet
> > contract (x1,y1) (x2,y2) 
> >   | x2 <= y1 = if x2 >= x1 then [(x1, (max y1 y2))] else 
> >	         if y2 >= x1 then [(x2, (max y1 y2))] else [(x2,y2), (x1,y1)]
> >   | x1 <= y2 = if x1 >= x2 then [(x2, (max y1 y2))] else 
> >	         if y1 >= x2 then [(x1, (max y1 y2))] else [(x1,y1), (x2,y2)]
> >   | x1 <= x2 = [(x1,y1), (x2, y2)]
> 
> 
> Now generalizing this from Ranges to BasicSets is where i got stuck.
> In my limited grasp of haskell and FP, this contractSet function below
> is just crying for the use of a fold operation, but i can't for the
> life of me see how to do it.

As the result is a BasicSet, the accumulator would need to be a
BasicSet and the operator would need to have type:

	BasicSet -> Range -> BasicSet

This can presumably be implemented as a fold on contract, so
contractSet would essentially be a doubly-nested fold.

-- 
Glynn Clements <glynn at gclements.plus.com>