Case
Can I have a case
where the alternatives contain expressions?
You can make use of some syntactic sugar of Haskell, namely of guards.
case () of _
| cond1 -> ex1
| cond2 -> ex2
| cond3 -> ex3
| otherwise -> exDefault
Alternatively, one could simply factor out a function(/value) and use guards in the argument patterns.
Why sticking to syntactic sugar? We can do it nicely with a function implemented in Haskell:
select :: a -> [(Bool, a)] -> a
select def = maybe def snd . List.find fst
select exDefault
[(cond1, ex1),
(cond2, ex2),
(cond3, ex3)]
Alternative implementations are
select' def = fromMaybe def . lookup True
{- a purely functional implementation of if-then-else -}
if' :: Bool -> a -> a -> a
if' True x _ = x
if' False _ y = y
select'' = foldr (uncurry if')
The implementation of select''
makes clear that select
can be considered as nested if
s.
The functional if'
is also useful in connection with zipWith3
since zipWith3 if'
merges two lists according to a list of conditions.
If you don't like the parentheses for the pairs, you can also define
data SelectBranch a = (:->) {
condition :: Bool,
expression :: a
}
select :: a -> [SelectBranch a] -> a
select def = maybe def expression . List.find condition
select exDefault
[cond1 :-> ex1,
cond2 :-> ex2,
cond3 :-> ex3]
It is also possible to define a ternary operator '?' like in C. Because of partial application it will work nicely together with '$' for the else cause.
infixl 1 ?
(?) :: Bool -> a -> a -> a
True ? v = const v
False ? _ = id
cond1 ? ex1 $
cond2 ? ex2 $
cond3 ? ex3 $ exDefault