[Haskell-cafe] Comments and/or Criticisms

[Stuart Cook]

On 9/10/07, PR Stanley <prstanley at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Hi
> Any comments and/or criticisms would be most appreciated:
> --count the occurrences of char in string
> countC :: Char -> [Char] -> Int
> countC x xs = sum [1 | c <- xs, c == x]

That's a clever implementation, but I think there are clearer ways of
achieving the same goal. You could replace sum with length and get the
same answer, at which point the list comprehension isn't buying you
much.

How about this?

  countC ch xs = length $ filter (ch ==) xs

> --count occurrences of chars in string
> countCS :: [Char] -> [(Char, Int)]
> countCS xs = [(x, (countC x xs)) | x <- [' '..'z'], (countC x xs) > 0]

A few things to note:

* Those extra parens around countC are unnecessary; function
application has highest precedence.
* [' '..'z'] has a few issues: it misses a few ASCII characters
(including all the control codes), and won't catch non-ASCII
characters.
* Duplicating the call to countC will probably result in redundant
evaluation, so it's best to avoid that if possible -- difficult to
avoid cleanly inside a comprehension though.
* Scanning the string repeatedly for each potential character ['
'..'z'] seems excessive, especially if you want to expand it to
include non-ASCII. Better just to deal with the characters actually in
the string as they appear, I think.


Stuart