[Haskell-cafe] Function composition

[Conal Elliott]

Hi Oscar,

Define

    result = (.)

Then '(result f) g' applies f to the result part of a function g.  That's
what you want when negating the result of not.  For (==), you want to negate
the result of the result, so you'd instead say '(result.result) not (==)'.
Keep composing result for deeper applications.

If you want to edit/transform the first or second part of a pair instead of
the result of a function, then you'd use 'first' or 'second' in place of
'result'.

If you think of f (here f=not) as an "semantic editor" (transformer) of
values, then 'result', 'first', and 'second' are "semantic editor
combinators", which can be composed together arbitrarily.  See
http://conal.net/blog/semantic-editor-combinators .

   - Conal

2008/12/26 Oscar Picasso <oscarpicasso at gmail.com>

> Hi,
>
> I can write:
> *Main> let yes = not . not
> *Main> :t yes
> yes :: Bool -> Bool
>
> But not:
> *Main> let isNotEqual = not . (==)
>
> <interactive>:1:23:
>     Couldn't match expected type `Bool'
>            against inferred type `a -> Bool'
>     Probable cause: `==' is applied to too few arguments
>     In the second argument of `(.)', namely `(==)'
>     In the expression: not . (==)
>
> Why?
>
> Oscar
>
>
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