[erlang-questions] Proposal: add lists:intersperse/2 and lists:intercalate/2

[Joe Armstrong]

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Jesper Louis Andersen
<jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED> wrote:
> Hi Erlangers,
>
> I'd really like to add two functions to the lists module from Haskell:
>
> intersperse(List, Seperator) produces a list where each element is separated
> by separator, i.e.
>
> X = [1,2,3]
> [1, x, 2, x, 3] = lists:intersperse(X, x),
>
> and it's cousin, intercalate(ListOfLists, Separator) is
> append(intersperse(ListOfLists, Seperator)), i.e,
>
> Y = ["a", "b", "c"]
> "a, b, c" = lists:intercalate(Y, ", "),
>
> The implementations are straightforward and easy to write tests for, even
> property based tests if needed.
>
> The rationale for this proposal is that I find myself implementing this
> function again and again in every project I write, and it is highly generic.
> It belongs in a typical list module. OCaml libraries add it. Haskell's
> Data.List has it. I believe Erlang, being a practical language, should have
> it as well.
>

This is a splendid function - I have one myself called interleave, the only
problem is that if somebody uses this and puts their code in a library on github
and somebody fetches this code and runs it with an *old* version of erlang
then they will get a error and probably blame your code.

This is why I have a single library called elib2_misc.erl where I put *all* the
stuff that should be somewhere else - then I ship this with my code.

The whole story of dependency analysis seems to be be in a very sad state.

I use the 'keep your fingers crossed and hope it will work' method.

Years ago I wanted to add a -needs(Vsn) annotation to module

For example:

     -needs(erl18).

Means would mean you need version 18 of erlang.

That way if you added a needs annotation to the code that used the updated lists
then an earlier version of Erlang could give a meaningfull diagnostic
and not just
crash when the encountering a function 'from the future'.

Actually I had another problem today - a program I wrote in 2003 did not work
with the latest and greatest Erlang - not because the language had changed
but because the library functions had been renamed and moved around.

I guess a lint program would be useful here. It should be fairly
doable to download
all old erlangs and simple make lists of all the function names in all modules
and do a bit of consistency checking.

Cheers

/Joe




> Thoughts?
>
> --
> J.
>
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