split isSpace " foo bar baz " = ["foo","bar","baz"] split' isSpace " foo bar baz " = ["","foo","","bar","baz",""]
split can be obtained from split' via composition with "filter (not . null)". Therefore the second version (split') is more important. The name "chop" confused me in the first place (as I thought only the last element should be chopped off) The name "split" is a bit too general. (compared with "intersperse" that somehow computes the opposite.) The haddock library docs http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/libraries/doc-index-S.html show: split 1 (Function) GHC.Exts 2 (Function) Language.Haskell.THSyntax 3 (Function) System.Random, Random splitAt Data.List, GHC.List, Prelude, List splitAtPS Data.PackedString splitPS Data.PackedString splitWithPS Data.PackedString According to PackedString the above function split' should be named "splitWith" since it has a predicate argument. (So we do not need to conform to PackedString.) Btw "splitWithPS" and "splitPS" are wrong as they ignore a (single) final blank! splitWithPS isSpace $ packString " foo bar baz " = ["","foo","","bar","baz"] Maybe "splitToLists" or "splitUp" (or "splitUpOn") are better names Christian