I've tried to transform the following list comprehension:
f xs = [ x+8 | (x,_) <- xs ]
using higher-order functions.
My first solution was:
f' xs = map (\(x,_) -> x+8) xs
After I tried various other approaches, I found out that the following also works:
f' xs = map((+8).fst) xs
Both versions of f' give the same (correct) output, but I don't understand why (+8).fst is equal to \(x,_) -> x+8 when using map on a list of tuples.
The definition of fst is
fst :: (a, b) -> a
fst (a, _) = a
and the definition of (.) is
(.) :: (b -> c) -> (a -> b) -> a -> c
(f . g) = \x -> f (g x)
If we use these definitions to expand your function, we get
f' xs = map ((+8) . fst) xs
f' xs = map (\x -> (+8) (fst x)) xs -- definition of (.)
f' xs = map (\x -> (+8) ((\(a, _) -> a) x)) -- definition of fst
f' xs = map (\(a, _) -> (+8) a) -- we can move the pattern matching
f' xs = map (\(a, _) -> a + 8) -- expand section
Both versions of f' give the same (correct) output, but I don't understand why
(+8).fstis equal to(x,_) -> x+8when using map on a list of tuples.
The type of fst is:
fst :: (a, b) -> a
and what it does is it takes the first element of a pair (a tuple of two elements).
The type of (+8) is:
(+8) :: Num a => a -> a
and what it does is it takes as input a Num, applies + 8 to it and returns the result.
Now, the type of (+8) . fst is:
((+8).fst) :: Num c => (c, b) -> c
which is the composition of fst and (+8). Specifically it's the function that takes as input a pair, extracts the first element and adds 8 to it.
This can be easily seen by seen an example:
((+8).fst) (3, 'a')
-- 11
The same thing happens with \ (x, _) -> x + 8. You take a pair as input (in the lambda), pattern match the first argument to x, increment it by 8 and return it:
(\ (x, _) -> x + 8) (3, 'a')
-- 11
