Generalize filterM to Applicative

[David Feuer]

In a departure from the filterM tradition, I think if we add a filterA
for lists then it should go in Data.List. That way, we can have a
different filterA in Data.Sequence, etc. The A makes it Applicative
already; the rest seems tied to the container.

On Sun, Dec 28, 2014 at 1:14 PM, Yitzchak Gale <gale at sefer.org> wrote:
> David Feuer wrote:
>> filterM          :: (Monad m) => (a -> m Bool) -> [a] -> m [a]
>> We could change this to
>> filterM :: (Applicative f) => (a -> f Bool) -> [a] -> f [a]
>
> Following the usual conventions, that should be filterA.
>
> And I'm not sure where it should go. We could also
> generalize the list parameter to a Foldable and put
> it in Data.Foldable, but I don't think that would be
> very useful, since in the end it anyway returns a list.
>
> We could add a new "Filterable" class, but that's also
> probably not too useful for anything not list-like. For
> example, Data.Tree has two useful filters, filterGraft
> and filterPrune.
>
> So maybe it should go in Control.Applicative? Not very
> satisfying. Any ideas?
>
> As for the fate of the name filterM:
>
> Personally, I would want filterM to remain a convenient
> type-specialized version for monads. But recent madness
> would turn it into yet another unsightly overly polymorphic
> namespace wasting synonym for filterA.
>
> Thanks,
> Yitz