[Haskell-cafe] How do you rewrite your code?

[Alp Mestanogullari]

For the style part, I recommend hlint [1].

Regarding the testing, QuickCheck is excellent and I have been happy with it
so far.

>From a more general point of view, I agree with a point of view that many
haskellers seem to share, but that Cale Gibbard put in words on #haskell
regularly. It consists in looking at your code from a higher point of view
and trying to express what you wrote in a "sublanguage" of primitives and
combinators. He pointed to [2] for more details and examples.

Hope it helps.

[1] http://community.haskell.org/~ndm/hlint/
[2] http://contracts.scheming.org/

On Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 8:20 PM, Sean Leather <leather at cs.uu.nl> wrote:

> There are numerous threads on the Haskell Café involving rewriting,
> refactoring, refining, and in general improving code (for some definition of
> improve). I am interested in seeing examples of how Haskell code can be
> rewritten to make it better. Some general examples are:
>
>    - Eta-reduce
>    - Make more pointfree
>    - Introduce monadic operators or do-notation
>       - e.g. for Maybe, lists, State
>       - Eliminate monadic operators or do-notation
>    - Generalize types
>       - e.g. change map to fmap, (++) to mappend
>       - Use instances of Functor, Applicative, Alternative, Category,
>    Arrow, Monoid, Traversable, etc.
>    - Use library functions from Data.List, Data.Map, Data.Set, etc.
>    - Use some form of generic programming (e.g. SYB, Uniplate, EMGM,
>    Alloy)
>    - Use other libraries not included in the Platform
>
>
> My question is simple:
>
>    *How do you rewrite your code to improve it?*
>
> You can answer this in any way you like, but I think the most useful answer
> is to show a reasonably small, concrete example of what your code looked
> like before and after. Also, please describe how you think the rewrite
> improves such code.
>
>    - Is it better style? More useful? More efficient?
>    - Are the types (before and after) the same?
>    - Are the semantics the same?
>    - How did you prove or test equivalence? (e.g. Can you use equational
>    reasoning to confirm the rewrite is valid? Did you use QuickCheck?)
>
>
> Here is an example that I find myself doing occasionally.
>
> For all x, f:
>
> x >>= return . f
> -->
> fmap f x
> or
> f <$> x -- requires importing Control.Applicative
>
> I think the right-hand side (RHS) is more concise and simpler. The types
> here do change: the type constructor has a Monad constraint in the left-hand
> side and a Functor constraint in the RHS. Types that are Monad instances are
> generally also Functor instances, so this is often possible. I'm convinced
> the semantics are preserved, though I haven't proven it.
>
> What's an example of a rewrite that you've encountered?
>
> Thanks,
> Sean
>
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>
>


-- 
Alp Mestanogullari
http://alpmestan.wordpress.com/
http://alp.developpez.com/
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