On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 at 10:02:53PM +0200, Henning Thielemann wrote:
I assumed that 'groupBy' would compare adjacent elements, but it seems to compare the leading element of each block with subsequent elements. Since the documentation doesn't tell which elements are actually compared it seems to assume that the comparison is commutative and transitive. Maybe this point should be made clearer. Additionally I think that comparing neighbouring elements is a useful behaviour and I suggest an according variant of 'groupBy' for Data.List. Opinions?
This has come up a few times now. The Haskell 98 Report says that the argument function is assumed to define an equivalence. For such arguments, the definition given in the Report (comparing with the leading element) is equivalent to a definition comparing adjacent elements, like: groupBy rel [] = [] groupBy rel (x:xs) = (x:ys) : groupBy rel zs where (ys,zs) = groupByAux x xs groupByAux x0 (x:xs) | rel x0 x = (x:ys, zs) where (ys,zs) = groupByAux x xs groupByAux y xs = ([], xs) But the latter definition is also useful for other relations, e.g. groupBy (<=) would produce the list of "runs". So I'd suggest that changing the reference definition of groupBy, and removing the restriction, would be an improvement, but still compatible with Haskell 98. The same goes for nubBy.