Proposal: Add chop function to Data.List

[wren ng thornton]

On 12/13/10 12:17 PM, Lennart Augustsson wrote:
> 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.

It's also deeply related to iteratees (for the obvious enumerator of a 
list). The major difference is that iteratees enforce that the consuming 
function must return a tail of the input stream, whereas this function 
doesn't require that at all (for both good and ill).

The name "chop" seems a bit strange to me, but other than that it's a 
nice function.

-- 
Live well,
~wren