Proposal: Add chop function to Data.List

[Lennart Augustsson]

I would like to propose the following function for inclusion in Data.List

chop :: (a -> (b, [a]) -> [a] -> [b]
chop _ [] = []
chop f as = b : chop f as'
  where (b, as') = f as

It's commonly occuring recursion pattern.  Typically chop is called
with some function that will consume an initial prefix of the list
and produce a value and the rest of the list.

The function is clearly related to unfoldr, but I find it more
convenient to use in a lot of cases.

Some examples
-------------

-- From Data.List
group :: (Eq a) => [a] -> [[a]]
group = chop (\ xs@(x:_) -> span (==x) xs)

-- From Data.List
words :: String -> [String]
words = filter (not . null) . chop (span (not . isSpace) . dropWhile
isSpace)

-- From Data.List
lines :: String -> [String]
lines = chop ((id *** dropNL) . span (/= '\n'))
  where dropNL ('\n':s) = s; dropNL s = s

-- From Data.List
tails :: [a] -> [[a]]
tails = (++ [[]]) . chop (\ xs@(_:xs') -> (xs, xs'))

-- From Data.List
map f = chop (\ (x:xs) -> (f x, xs))

-- Split a list into a list of list with length n.
splitEveryN n = chop (splitAt n)

-- Simple Haskell tokenizer
tokenize = chop (head . lex)


History
-------

I first encountered this function around 1981 when I was talking to
Sören Holmström about this recursion pattern and he said that he
had also observed it and he called the function chopList.
Ever since then I've used chopList a lot, but unfortunately I always
have to make my own definition of this common function.
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