Please apply the comparison function given to nubBy to elements of the list in the order in which they occur in the list.

[Christian Maeder]

Looking at the old tickets
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2528
http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/3280

the USE_REPORT_PRELUDE version of nub is also different
from the implementation, but both variants fulfill "nub = nubBy (==)"
(the prelude version by definition).

So when we change the nubBy implmentation we also need to change the nub 
implementation (which is more difficult, because it uses "elem").

Cheers Christian

Am 20.09.2011 12:59, schrieb Christian Maeder:
> Looking at the code of nubBy
> http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/base-4.4.0.0/src/Data-List.html#nubBy
>
>
> nubBy :: (a -> a -> Bool) -> [a] -> [a]
> #ifdef USE_REPORT_PRELUDE
> nubBy eq [] = []
> nubBy eq (x:xs) = x : nubBy eq (filter (\ y -> not (eq x y)) xs)
> #else
> nubBy eq l = nubBy' l []
> where
> nubBy' [] _ = []
> nubBy' (y:ys) xs
> | elem_by eq y xs = nubBy' ys xs
> | otherwise = y : nubBy' ys (y:xs)
>
> -- Not exported:
> -- Note that we keep the call to `eq` with arguments in the
> -- same order as in the reference implementation
> -- 'xs' is the list of things we've seen so far,
> -- 'y' is the potential new element
> elem_by :: (a -> a -> Bool) -> a -> [a] -> Bool
> elem_by _ _ [] = False
> elem_by eq y (x:xs) = y `eq` x || elem_by eq y xs
> #endif
>
> I see that the USE_REPORT_PRELUDE version corresponds to your proposal,
> but the actual implementation (based on elem_by) behaves differently
> despite the "same order" comment!
>
> Therefore I support your proposal to change "y `eq` x" in elem_by (and
> possibly improve the documentation).
>
> Cheers Christian
>
> Am 08.09.2011 02:07, schrieb Cale Gibbard:
>> I just tried this in ghci-7.0.3:
>>
>> ghci> nubBy (>=) [1,2,3,4]
>> [1]
>>
>> Think about what this is doing: it is excluding 2 from the list
>> because 2>= 1, rather than including it because 1>= 2 fails.
>>
>> I think an important convention when it comes to higher order
>> functions on lists is that to the extent which is possible, the
>> function parameters take elements from the list (or things computed
>> from those) in the order in which they occur in the original list.
>>
>> If we reimplement it in the obvious way:
>> ghci> let nubBy f [] = []; nubBy f (x:xs) = x : filter (not . f x)
>> (nubBy f xs)
>> ghci> nubBy (>=) [1,2,3,4]
>> [1,2,3,4]
>>
>> I'm aware that the Report (strangely!) explicitly leaves the behaviour
>> of nubBy unspecified for functions which are not equivalence
>> relations, but the behaviour given by the Report implementation (the
>> opposite of the current behaviour in GHC) is useful and desirable
>> nonetheless.
>>
>> I'm sure I've written about this before. I'm not entirely sure what
>> happened to the previous thread of discussion about this, but it just
>> came up again for me, and I decided that I was sufficiently irritated
>> by it to post again.
>>
>> Another thing perhaps worth pointing out is that the parameters to
>> mapAccumR have always been backwards (compare it with foldr). Few
>> enough people use this function that I'm fairly sure we could just
>> change it without harm.
>>
>> - Cale