Add NonEmptyMap and NonEmptySet to containers

John Ericson john.ericson at obsidian.systems
Thu Apr 25 17:17:15 UTC 2019


I haven't looked into `Seq` in addition to `Map` and `Set`, just 
`IntSet` and `IntMap`. But it might be a similar thing? I take it that 
with `Seq` today only the root can be empty and everything else is 
single or deep? That means we *would* just use a single Maybe-like thing 
at the top level, no mutual recursion. But on the other hand to make 
that to make that work efficiently we would would need GHC to support 
unboxing sums, so 1 + 2 variants can become a flat 3.

Also, https://github.com/haskell/containers/pull/616 is now where the 
actual implementation is happening, not just the datatype changes as 
before. Feel free to comment on the concrete work in progress, everyone!

John

On 4/25/19 11:36 AM, Zemyla wrote:
> A Seq has either Empty, Single, or Deep. A NonEmptySeq would have just 
> Single or Deep.
>
> On Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 09:55 David Feuer <david.feuer at gmail.com 
> <mailto:david.feuer at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I don't see the benefit there, unless you see a way to work it
>     into the representation.
>
>     On Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 10:53 AM Zemyla <zemyla at gmail.com
>     <mailto:zemyla at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         As long as we're doing this, can we also add NonEmptySeq as well?
>
>         On Thu, Apr 25, 2019, 09:11 Artyom Kazak <yom at artyom.me
>         <mailto:yom at artyom.me>> wrote:
>
>             I'm -1 on any kind of |Map = NEMap|.
>
>             An ordinary map and a non-empty map are semantically
>             different. I believe that if I non-empty maps were already
>             in |containers|, I would pretty much always care whether a
>             |Map| I see in code is a 0-map or 1-map.
>
>             Similarly, I prefer |Int| and |Word| instead of |Int| and
>             |Unsigned.Int|. (Luckily that's already the case.)
>
>             We already have a precedent with |Text| and |ByteString|,
>             where the lazy and the strict versions are only
>             distinguished by the module prefix. In my experience,
>             modules where both are used are pretty common, and I end
>             up just introducing |type LByteString = Lazy.ByteString|
>             in all my projects, because otherwise I need to scroll to
>             the imports section whenever I need to know which flavor
>             of bytestring is being used. (Or if I'm reading haddocks,
>             I have to look at the link because Haddock hides module
>             prefixes.)
>
>             "why not both" is even worse. I still can't trust the
>             |Map|, but now I also have to learn and remember that two
>             modules are the same. Speaking from experience again –
>             most people seem to be surprised by the fact that
>             |Data.Map.Lazy| and |Data.Map.Strict| export the same
>             |Map| type. The proposed module hierarchy would move
>             |containers| to the top of my "packages that confuse
>             beginners" list, beating even |aeson|.
>
>             As an aside, I wish we had a proper interface for
>             container-like structures, or at least a solution to name
>             scoping. I really like the way Rust does it, for instance,
>             where certain functions can be "attached" to a type – I'm
>             hesitant to call them "methods" because Rust is not an OOP
>             language.
>             On Apr 25 2019, at 2:49 pm, Mario Blažević
>             <mblazevic at stilo.com <mailto:mblazevic at stilo.com>> wrote:
>
>                 On 2019-04-18 11:00 p.m., David Feuer wrote:
>
>                     I'm in favor of the proposal. I find the
>                     isomorphism between Map (a,b) v
>                     and Map a (NonemptyMap b v) very pleasant. The
>                     fact that others have
>                     written less-performant implementations of this
>                     idea is rather
>                     convincing. The fact that doing this removes
>                     partial matches in the
>                     implementation is nice. And I'll take performance
>                     improvements where I
>                     can get them. The main question is the proper name
>                     of the type. Just
>                     Data.Map.Nonempty.Map, or .NonemptyMap? Should the
>                     empty be capitalized?
>
>
>                 There seems to be a consensus for
>                 Data.Map.NonEmpty.NEMap, with the
>                 type and the functions slightly off the regular ones.
>                 This design would
>                 make it easier to use regular and non-empty containers
>                 together, but it
>                 be annoying for the use case of replacing all uses of
>                 an existing
>                 regular container with a non-empty one. I'd rather
>                 change just the
>                 import declaration than all occurrences of the type
>                 name and functions.
>
>                 I don't want to derail the implementation with
>                 bikeshedding, so I'm
>                 just going to ask why not both? The library can both
>                 export the tweaked
>                 names and add a module, say Data.NonEmpty.Map.Lazy,
>                 that exports the
>                 type synonym Map = NEMap. It would also rename all the
>                 functions back to
>                 their names from Data.Map.Lazy.
>
>
>
>                     On Thu, Apr 18, 2019, 7:15 PM John Cotton Ericson
>                     <John.Ericson at obsidian.systems> wrote:
>
>                     In
>                     https://github.com/haskell/containers/issues/608 I
>                     proposed
>                     adding non-empty variants of Map and Set, analogous to
>                     Data.List.NonEmpty for List, to containers.
>                     semigroupoids
>                     demonstrates the many uses and structure of
>                     non-empty containers in
>                     general, and libraries such as
>                     https://github.com/mstksg/nonempty-containers and
>                     https://github.com/andrewthad/non-empty-containers
>                     demonstrate the
>                     interest in non-empty maps and sets in particular.
>                     My favorite
>                     use-case is that they're needed to "curry"
>                     containers: for example,
>                     |Map (k0, k1) v| is isomorphic not to |Map k0 (Map
>                     k1 v)| but to
>                     |Map k0 (NonEmptyMap k1 v)|. I like this use-case
>                     because it comes
>                     from the containers themselves.
>
>                     Importantly, there's no good way to do this
>                     outside of containers;
>                     doing so leads to imbalancing / extra indirection,
>                     or massive code
>                     duplication. If one wraps the container was an
>                     extra value like
>                     Data.List.NonEmpty, one's left with an unavoidable
>                     extra
>                     indirection/imbalance. One can rectify this by
>                     copying and modifying
>                     the implementation of containers, but that's
>                     hardly maintainable;
>                     even as though the algorithms are the same, enough
>                     lines are touched
>                     that merging upstream containers is nigh impossible.
>
>                     On the other hand, the non-empty containers can be
>                     elegantly and
>                     sufficiently implemented alongside their originals
>                     by taking the Bin
>                     constructor and breaking it out into it's own
>                     type, mutually
>                     recursive with the original. This avoids the
>                     indirection/imbalancing
>                     and code duplication problems: the algorithms work
>                     exactly as before
>                     creating the same trees (remember the UNPACK), and
>                     no code
>                     duplicated since the functions become mutually
>                     recursive matching
>                     the types.
>
>                     To briefly summarize the thread:
>
>                     1. I proposed the issue after performing this same
>                     refactor on the
>                     dependent-map package:
>                     https://github.com/obsidiansystems/dependent-map/tree/non-empty,
>                     a fork of containers.
>                     2. I made
>                     https://github.com/haskell/containers/pull/616
>                     which just
>                     changes the types, to make sure UNPACK preserved
>                     the importance.
>                     3.
>                     https://gist.github.com/Ericson2314/58709d0d99e0c0e83ad266701cd71841
>                     the benchmarks showed rather than degrading
>                     performance, PR 616
>                     actually /improved/ it.
>
>                      If there is preliminary consensus, I'll make a
>                     second PR on top
>                     which generalizes the functions like on my
>                     dependent-map branch.
>
>                     Thanks,
>
>                     John
>
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