Proposed additions to Data.Map: lookupFloor and lookupCeiling

[Leon Smith]

On Mon, Mar 1, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Sean Leather <leather at cs.uu.nl> wrote:
> It seems more intuitive to reverse the naming. The key parameter to
> lookupFloor is actually the ceiling, and the key returned is the greatest
> key less than or equal to the ceiling. Since there is no floor involved
> here, I would call the function lookupCeiling.

The greatest number less than something would be the floor.  :-)

For example:

ghci>  let map = Map.fromList [ (x, ()) | x <- [0,10..1000] ]
ghci>  lookupFloor 75 map
   Just (70, ())
ghci>  floor 7.5
   7
ghci>  lookupCeiling 115 map
   Just (120,())
ghci>  ceiling 11.5
   12

But honestly I almost invariably get the definitions of floor and
ceiling wrong unless I stop to think for a few seconds.   I've trained
myself to do that.  ;-)   Maybe a few examples in the haddocks would
be in order.   That's easier to comprehend,  if you know approximately
what it should do.

Also, it occurs to me that maybe a combined function :: (Ord k) => k
-> Map k v -> (Maybe k v, Maybe k v)  would be useful in addition to
or in place of lookupFloor and lookupCeiling.  But I'm not sure.

Best,
Leon