[Haskell-beginners] case as guards in lambda functions

[Brent Yorgey]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 09:58:15PM +0100, Daniel Fischer wrote:
> On Wednesday 10 November 2010 21:13:26, Russ Abbott wrote:
> > I have often wanted to use a guard in a lambda function and had thought
> > it wasn't possible. But apparently the case construct allows a viable
> > approach. Here is a silly example.
> >
> > testCase = map
> >              (\xs -> case xs of
> >                      []              -> "empty list"
> >                      [y] | y < 5     -> "small singleton"
> >
> >                          | otherwise -> "large singleton"
> >
> >                      _               -> "multi-element list")
> >
> > > testCase [[], [2], [7], [1,2,3]]
> >
> > ["empty","small singleton","large singleton","multi-element list"]
> >
> > It seems particularly useful to be able to include both patterns and
> > guards in case expressions. I haven't seen this usage anywhere.
> 
> If it's not a very small case-expression, usually one puts it in a where 
> clause,
> 
> map f list
>   where
>     f xs = case xs of
>              ...

Yes, and doing it this way obviates the need for a case expression:

  map f list
    where 
      f [] = ...
      f [y] | y < 5 = ...
 
> > Is it considered bad form?
> 

Using patterns and guards in case expressions isn't necessarily bad
form.  But it doesn't seem to be that common.

-Brent