[Haskell-cafe] how to break foldl' ?

[Malcolm Wallace]

> say if I want to sum a list of numbers but only until
> it hits a max limit. 
> 
> Currently, I control it through the function and
> basically do nothing when the max is hit. However, if
> the list is very long, would this mean the same
> function would be called for the rest of the list
> which can be a waste of cycle ? In an imperative
> language, I just break/return in the middle of the
> loop.

If you are using foldl or foldl', then yes, the definition tells you
that 'foldl' itself will be applied as many times as the length of
the list:

    foldl f z []     =  z
    foldl f z (x:xs) =  foldl f (f z x) xs

For your situation, foldr is better:

    foldr f z []     =  z
    foldr f z (x:xs) =  f x (foldr f z xs)

The function 'f' is the outermost application, therefore it can decide
to ignore its second argument, meaning that the recursive call to
foldr is never computed.

Regards,
    Malcolm