On 8/11/07, Frank Buss <fb@frank-buss.de> wrote:

Is it possible to write a function like this:

zipn n list_1 list_2 list_3 ... list_n

which implements zip3 for n=3, zip4 for n=4 etc.? Looks like variable number
of arguments are possible, like printf shows, so a general zipn should be
possible, too. If it is possible, why there are functions like zip5 and not
just zipn?

Template Haskell can also be used to generate appropriate code for zipn (in fact, the original paper on TH even uses this as an example [1]). But again, this approach only works if the value of n is known at compile time.

-Brent

[1] http://www.haskell.org/th/papers/meta-haskell.ps