[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] ANN: random-access-list-0.1

[Isaac Dupree]

Henning Thielemann wrote:
> 
> On Thu, 12 Jun 2008, Isaac Dupree wrote:
> 
>> Henning Thielemann wrote:
>>>
>>> On Wed, 11 Jun 2008, Isaac Dupree wrote:
>>>
>>>> "extractHead" is an ugly name for a nevertheless standardish-meaning 
>>>> function... what is it usually called? uncons? headTail? 
>>>> (Data.Sequence, which is meant to be left-right symmetric, calls it 
>>>> "viewr"... except your version doesn't have the Maybe, it's partial 
>>>> instead, fails on empty lists)
>>>
>>> I like the 'viewL' and 'viewR' kind of functions, they are safer than 
>>> 'head' and 'tail', 'init' and 'last'. But since in most cases I used 
>>> 'viewL' in connection with 'maybe', the continuation style functions
>>>
>>> switchL :: b -> (a -> Seq a -> b) -> Seq a -> b
>>> switchR :: b -> (Seq a -> a -> b) -> Seq a -> b
>>
>> I think you got L and R backwards?
> 
> Why do you think so?
> 
> http://cvs.haskell.org/Hugs/pages/libraries/base/Data-Sequence.html#v%3Aviewl 

Because I was confused.  Looking again, you seem to be right...

>> it's a little confusing to me, but following Data.Sequence I think 
>> they're meant to match whether repeated L or R makes a foldl or a foldr.
> 
> viewl is like a 'case' for distinction of [] and (:) and thus can be 
> used to implement both foldl and foldr.

yes, but in the sense that foldr is more "natural" for lists than foldl, 
requiring just replacing the constructors "directly"