[Haskell-cafe] Producing MinimumValue

[Dan Weston]

The length command is too greedy. It wants to check the entire length of 
both lists, and only then compare. If you did this by hand, you would 
know to quit at the first nonequal element. To do this in Haskell, you 
should generally avoid "length". Lazier functions such as "and" stop as 
soon as they can:

and (map isEqual xs)

doesn't really map to every xs. The "and" keeps asking map to check the 
next element for equality, but stops asking when it gets a negative 
answer. length doesn't know to stop asking.

Dan

Alexteslin wrote:
> What wrong with my original solution?
> 
> allEqual2 :: [Int] -> Bool
> allEqual2 xs = length xs == length (filter isEqual xs)
> 	where
> 	isEqual n = (head xs) == n
> 
> It looks simpler to me
> 
> 
> Dan Weston wrote:
>> The real lesson here is that
>>
>> 1) no problem is "too easy" to cheat good software engineering practices.
>> 2) no solution not accompanied by at least a QuickCheck result should be 
>> viewed with suspicion
>>
>> I obviously have to go back and relearn these lessons.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> Jason Dagit wrote:
>>> On 7/19/07, Jason Dagit <dagit at codersbase.com> wrote:
>>>> On 7/19/07, Dan Weston <westondan at imageworks.com> wrote:
>>>>> Oops, you got me. I didn't even look at the third line, I just took it
>>>>> from the previous post. My first instinct actually was to write:
>>>>>
>>>>> allEqual x@(h:t) = and (zipWith (==) x t)
>>>> I prefer,
>>>>
>>>> allEqual [] = True
>>>> allEqual xs = foldl1 (==) xs
>>>>
>>>> But, unfortunately, it's not a one liner like yours (unless you allow
>>>> allEqual [] = undefined).
>>> Oh and silly me, that only works for [Bool].
>>>
>>> I'll hushup :)
>>>
>>> Jason
>>>
>>>>> but I don't think that zipWith is allowed in the question.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dan
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Antoine Latter wrote:
>>>>>> On 7/19/07, Dan Weston <westondan at imageworks.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> I would define:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> allEqual []         = True
>>>>>>> allEqual [_]        = True
>>>>>>> allEqual (x1:x2:xs) = (x1 == x2) && allEqual xs
>>>>>> What does this function do for "allEqual [1, 1, 2]" ?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Antoine
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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