[Haskell-cafe] ANN: unfoldable-0.4.0

[Sjoerd Visscher]

I am pleased to announce the 5th version of the unfoldable package. (This is the first announcement, you didn't miss anything.)
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/unfoldable-0.4.0

Just as there's a Foldable class, there should also be an Unfoldable class. This package provides one:

  class Unfoldable t where
    unfold :: Unfolder f => f a -> f (t a)

Writing instances of Unfoldable is similar to writing Traversable instances. For example, given a data type

  data Tree a = Empty | Leaf a | Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)

a suitable instance would be

  instance Unfoldable Tree where
    unfold fa = choose
      [ pure Empty
      , Leaf <$> fa
      , Node <$> unfold fa <*> fa <*> unfold fa
      ]

The choose function comes from the Unfolder class:

  class Applicative f => Unfolder f where
    choose :: [f x] -> f x

(If f is an Alternative instance, choose is simply Data.Foldable.asum.)

Different unfolders provide different ways of generating values, for example:
 - Random values
 - Enumeration of all values (depth-first or breadth-first)
 - Convert from a list
 - An implementation of QuickCheck's arbitrary should also be possible (still working on that)

Some examples can be found in the examples directory in the github repo:
https://github.com/sjoerdvisscher/unfoldable

Ideas and comments are welcome!

greetings,
Sjoerd