[Haskell-cafe] Using streams to clarify (?) the signature of Data.Text.replace

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 27/06/16 2:39 AM, Daniel Díaz wrote:

> In the "text" package, the signature of Data.Text.replace
> <http://hackage.haskell.org/package/text-1.2.2.1/docs/Data-Text.html#v:replace>  
> always sends me looking into the haddocks:
>
>      replace :: Text-> Text -> Text-> Text
>
>
> Which argument is the text to replace, which is the replacement and
> which is the text that should be scanned?

Considering partial application, the order that makes the most sense is
    - what to look for
    - what to replace it with
    - the big string to search and replace in
I've never used this function.  Let's go look at the documentation.
Pats self on back: nailed it.

> Imagine a generalized version of replace that 1) works on streams, and
> 2) allows replacing a sequence of texts (like, say, chapter headers)
> instead of replacing the same text repeatedly. It could have the
> following signature:
>
>      replace' :: Stream (Stream (Of Text) m) m ()
>                  -> Stream (Stream (Of Text) m) m Void
>                  -> Stream (Of Text) m r
>                  -> Stream (Of Text) m r
>
>
> Do you find easy to intuit, just by looking at that signature, which
> is the function of each argument?

Absolutely not.  In fact, this crossed my personal complexity horizon
and is still accelerating towards some kind of singularity.

The more I try to imagine a problem that this might be a solution to,
the less I can understand why it would be approached this way.

To be perfectly honest, I've never found replacing one string
by another to be terribly useful.  Replacing one *token sequence*
by another, yes.  Replacing a (match for a) regular expression by
a derived string, yes.