WHAT It is proposed to add a ‘lookup' function on 'Set' in the "containers" package. Feedback during the next two weeks is welcome. The function
lookup :: Ord a => a -> Set a -> Maybe a
is almost indentical to the 'member' function but, in addition, returns the value stored in the set. WHY The point of this proposal is to facilitate program-wide data sharing. The 'lookup' function gives access to a pointer to an object already stored in a Set and equal to a given argument. The 'lookup' function is a natural extension to the current 'lookupLT', 'lookupGT', 'lookupLE' and 'lookupGE' functions, with obvious semantics. Example use case: In a parser, the memory footprint can be reduced by collapsing all equal strings to a single instance of each string. To achieve this, one needs a way to get a previously seen string (internally, a pointer) equal to a newly parsed string. Amazingly, this is very difficult with the current "containers" library interface. One current option is to use a Map instead, e.g., 'Map String String' which stores twice as many pointers as necessary. HOW The git pull request at https://github.com/haskell/containers/pull/291 contains the straight-forward implementation of the 'lookup’ function on 'Set', with test cases, as a patch against the current containers master branch. Salutations, Nicolas.