On Thursday 09 September 2010 19:12:21, Lorenzo Isella wrote:
Up to some extent, I am done (later on I found out that reading this into a matrix for hmatrix is a one-liner), but I would like to achieve more just performing standard list manipulations. For instance, since my data files are always this simple (integers/real arrays of numbers)
(1) How can I tell the length of every sublist in my list?
map length gives the list of lengths (if all sublists are known to have the same length, of course one length is enough, e.g. head . map length if there is known to be at least one sublist).
(2) How can I e.g. stitch together the 1st element in every sublist in order to get the 1st column of the original data file?
map head does this. More general, import Data.List and then transpose does what you'd expect, so firstColumn xss = head (transpose xss) can do it. But there's a catch. As a rule, don't use head. head is a partial function, if it's called with an empty list, it throws an error. And that error isn't particularly informative. So if you have multiple calls to head in your programme and one of them throws an error, it can be a major pain to find out what went wrong (and sometimes an empty list where a nonempty one is expected isn't an unrecoverable error, in those cases using head is wrong in an additional way). It's okay to use head in places where it is known that it can't be called on an empty list because its argument comes from a function that produces only nonempty lists (some people disagree with that opinion and think head should never be called, on principle or because of a feared slippery slope). But in general, don't use head. So, how do we do it without head? For example, -- default value if there is no sublist sublistLength [] = 0 sublistLength (xs : _) = length xs Or use Maybe to indicate whether it's a real result or not, sublistLength [] = Nothing sublistLength (xs : _) = Just (length xs) {- import Data.Maybe sublistLength = fmap length . listToMaybe -} -- skip empty sublists firstColumn xss = [x | (x : _) <- xss] -- indicate empty sublists with Maybe import Data.Maybe -- for listToMaybe firstColumn xss = map listToMaybe xss That loses a little conciseness, but it buys you safety.
Many thanks
Lorenzo