Proposal: add 'equating' function to Data.List

[Herbert Valerio Riedel]

On 2014-07-18 at 21:26:16 +0200, Frerich Raabe wrote:

[...]

> In fact, this pattern is so common that there's a convenient
> 'comparing' function which provides a shortcut for this use case

btw, you got the history/causality backwards in your argument: afaik,
'comparing' predates 'on', and removing the existing function
'comparing' would have been a backward incompatible change.


[...]

> In fact, groupBy is just one of many *By functions taking an a -> a ->
> Bool -- many of which are Data.List, e.g. groupBy, nubBy, deleteBy,
> intersectBy, unionBy. Hence, it seems plausible to define 'equating'
> in Data.List. 

> This is the same reasoning as why 'comparing' is in Data.Ord: because
> the module exposes a lot of *By functions taking an a -> a ->
> Ordering.

I don't see in what way 'equating' belonging in "Data.List" poses the
"the same reasoning" of 'comparing' being in "Data.Ord". This would
rather call for 'equating' belonging in "Data.Eq" (which is actually a
module that's almost never imported explicitly).


Consequently, I'm -1 on adding 'equating' to Data.List.

However, I'm generally -0.5 on adding 'equating', as I'm not convinced
'equating' provides any significant benefit over "on (==)" (whose only
downside to me is that it requires an additional "import Data.Function")
I'd rather improve the existing documentation in Data.List to provide
code examples involving the use of `on` for the most common tasks.

Cheers,
  hvr