Proposal: Add chop function to Data.List

[Henning Thielemann]

On Mon, 13 Dec 2010, 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.

Is the difference between 'unfoldr' and 'chop' just the Maybe result type 
of f?

> I first encountered this function around 1981 when I was talking to
> S?ren Holmstr?m 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.

To work around this problem I have written utility-ht for the basic 
functions that I need all the time.