[Haskell-cafe] Sequence differences

[Joe Fredette]

You might try looking at Real World Haskell, it's not so much a tutorial 
on types, but a tutorial on Haskell in general. Theres also the 
Haskell-beginner's list, the backlogs of which are quite nice. Really 
the best way to learn is to just dive in, you can use Hoogle or Hayoo to 
search APIs. Just try to come up with a good idea, and start working on it!

And of course, you can ask questions here or on Haskell-beginners. The 
rumors are true, we're awesome people.

/Joe

michael rice wrote:
> All very neat, and it works! Thanks.
>
> But I copied
>
> map :: (a -> b) -> [a] -> [b]    <==  I'm assuming this is correct
>
> from something called "A Tour of the Haskell Prelude" at
>
> http://undergraduate.csse.uwa.edu.au/units/CITS3211/lectureNotes/tourofprelude.html#all
>
> which I was looking at to try and roll my own typing.
>
>
> My next question:
>
> My function
>
> s f ls
>
> seems much like
>
> map f ls
>
> but instead looks like  
>
> s :: (a -> a -> a) -> [a] -> [a]
>
>
> Clearly, there's more to the picture than meets the eye. Is there a 
> good tutorial on types?
>
> Michael
>
>
> --- On *Fri, 4/10/09, Joe Fredette /<jfredett at gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: Joe Fredette <jfredett at gmail.com>
>     Subject: Re: [Haskell-cafe] Sequence differences
>     To: "michael rice" <nowgate at yahoo.com>, "haskell Cafe mailing
>     list" <haskell-cafe at haskell.org>
>     Date: Friday, April 10, 2009, 2:07 AM
>
>     So, we can walk through it-
>
>     >     s f [] = []
>     >     s f [x] = [x]
>     >     s f l = [ a f b | (a,b) <- zip (init l) (tail l)]
>
>     First, we can write some of it to be a little more idiomatic, viz:
>
>     s _ []  = []
>     s _ [x] = [x]
>     s f ls  = [f a b | (a,b) <- zip (init ls) (tail ls)]
>
>     First, we have a function type, we can tell the variable f is a
>     function because it's applied to arguments in the third case,
>     since it's applied to two arguments, it's binary, so `s :: (a -> b
>     -> c) -> ?` however, from the
>     second case, we know that whatever the type of the second argument
>     (a list of some type `a1`) is also the type
>     of the return argument, since the `s` acts as the identity for
>     lists of length less than 2, so
>
>        s :: (a -> b -> a1) -> [a1] -> [a1]
>
>     However, since the arguments for `f` are drawn from the same list,
>     the argument types must _also_ be of type `a1`, leaving us with:
>
>        s :: (a -> a -> a) -> [a] -> [a]
>
>     This is, interestingly enough, precisely the type of foldr1.
>
>     We can write your original function in another, cleaner way
>     though, too, since zip will "zip" to the smaller of the two
>     lengths, so you don't need to worry about doing the init and the
>     tail, so `s` is really:
>
>     s _ []  = []
>     s _ [x] = [x]
>     s f ls  = [f a b | (a,b) <- zip ls (tail ls)]
>
>     but there is a function which does precisely what the third case
>     does, called "zipWith" which takes a
>     binary function and two lists and -- well -- does what that list
>     comprehension does. In fact, it does
>     what your whole function does... In fact, it _is_ your function,
>     specialized a little, eg:
>
>     yourZipWith f ls = zipWith f ls (tail ls)
>
>
>     Hope that helps
>
>     /Joe
>
>     michael rice wrote:
>     > I have a Scheme function that calculates sequence differences,
>     i.e., it returns a sequence that is the difference between the 2nd
>     and the 1st element, the 3rd and the 2nd, the 4th and the 3rd, etc.
>     >
>     > (define s
>     >   (lambda (f l)
>     >     (cond ((null? (cdr l)) '())
>     >           (else (cons (f (cadr l) (car l))
>     >                       (s f (cdr l)))))))
>     >
>     > where
>     >
>     > (s - '(0,1,3,6,10,15,21,28)) => (1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
>     >
>     >
>     > I'm thinking the same function in Haskell would be something like
>     >
>     > s ::
>     > s f [] = []
>     > s f [x] = [x]
>     > s f l = [ a f b | (a,b) <- zip (init l) (tail l)]
>     >
>     >
>     > but can't figure out what the function typing would be.
>     >
>     > Michael
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>     >
>     > _______________________________________________
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>     >   
>
>
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