Foldable

The Foldable class represents data structures that can be reduced to a summary value one element at a time. Strict left-associative folds are a good fit for space-efficient reduction, while lazy right-associative folds are a good fit for corecursive iteration, or for folds that short-circuit after processing an initial subsequence of the structure's elements. Instances can be derived automatically by enabling the DeriveFoldable extension. For example, a derived instance for a binary tree might be:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveFoldable #-}
data Tree a = Empty
| Leaf a
| Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)
deriving Foldable

A more detailed description can be found in the Overview section of Data.Foldable#overview. For the class laws see the Laws section of Data.Foldable#laws.

Class of data structures that can be folded to a summary value.

Foldable functions, with wrappers like the Safe module.

The Foldable class represents data structures that can be reduced to a summary value one element at a time. Strict left-associative folds are a good fit for space-efficient reduction, while lazy right-associative folds are a good fit for corecursive iteration, or for folds that short-circuit after processing an initial subsequence of the structure's elements. Instances can be derived automatically by enabling the DeriveFoldable extension. For example, a derived instance for a binary tree might be:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveFoldable #-}
data Tree a = Empty
| Leaf a
| Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)
deriving Foldable

A more detailed description can be found in the Overview section of Data.Foldable#overview. For the class laws see the Laws section of Data.Foldable#laws.

Data structures that can be folded. For example, given a data type

data Tree a = Empty | Leaf a | Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)

a suitable instance would be

instance Foldable Tree where
foldMap f Empty = mempty
foldMap f (Leaf x) = f x
foldMap f (Node l k r) = foldMap f l `mappend` f k `mappend` foldMap f r

This is suitable even for abstract types, as the monoid is assumed to satisfy the monoid laws. Alternatively, one could define foldr:

instance Foldable Tree where
foldr f z Empty = z
foldr f z (Leaf x) = f x z
foldr f z (Node l k r) = foldr f (f k (foldr f z r)) l

Foldable instances are expected to satisfy the following laws:

foldr f z t = appEndo (foldMap (Endo . f) t ) z

foldl f z t = appEndo (getDual (foldMap (Dual . Endo . flip f) t)) z

fold = foldMap id

length = getSum . foldMap (Sum . const  1)

sum, product, maximum, and minimum should all be essentially equivalent to foldMap forms, such as

sum = getSum . foldMap Sum

but may be less defined. If the type is also a Functor instance, it should satisfy

foldMap f = fold . fmap f

which implies that

foldMap f . fmap g = foldMap (f . g)

Re-exports a subset of the Data.Foldable1 module along with some additional combinators that require Foldable1 constraints.

Contains utility functions for working with tuples.

This module provides Foldable and Traversable related types and functions.

The Foldable class represents data structures that can be reduced to a summary value one element at a time. Strict left-associative folds are a good fit for space-efficient reduction, while lazy right-associative folds are a good fit for corecursive iteration, or for folds that short-circuit after processing an initial subsequence of the structure's elements. Instances can be derived automatically by enabling the DeriveFoldable extension. For example, a derived instance for a binary tree might be:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveFoldable #-}
data Tree a = Empty
| Leaf a
| Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)
deriving Foldable

A more detailed description can be found in the Overview section of Data.Foldable#overview. For the class laws see the Laws section of Data.Foldable#laws.

Foldable types. A minimal implementation of this interface is given by either FoldMap or Foldr, but a default still needs to be given explicitly for the other.

data MyType a = ... {- Some custom Foldable type -}

-- Method 1: Implement Foldr, default FoldMap.
type instance Eval (Foldr f y xs) = ... {- Explicit implementation -}
type instance Eval (FoldMap f xs) = FoldMapDefault_ f xs {- Default -}

-- Method 2: Implement FoldMap, default Foldr.
type instance Eval (FoldMap f xs) = ... {- Explicit implementation -}
type instance Eval (Foldr f y xs) = FoldrDefault_ f y xs {- Default -}

Data structures that can be folded. For example, given a data type

data Tree a = Empty | Leaf a | Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)

a suitable instance would be

instance Foldable Tree where
foldMap f Empty = mempty
foldMap f (Leaf x) = f x
foldMap f (Node l k r) = foldMap f l `mappend` f k `mappend` foldMap f r

This is suitable even for abstract types, as the monoid is assumed to satisfy the monoid laws. Alternatively, one could define foldr:

instance Foldable Tree where
foldr f z Empty = z
foldr f z (Leaf x) = f x z
foldr f z (Node l k r) = foldr f (f k (foldr f z r)) l

Foldable instances are expected to satisfy the following laws:

foldr f z t = appEndo (foldMap (Endo . f) t ) z

foldl f z t = appEndo (getDual (foldMap (Dual . Endo . flip f) t)) z

fold = foldMap id

sum, product, maximum, and minimum should all be essentially equivalent to foldMap forms, such as

sum = getSum . foldMap Sum

but may be less defined. If the type is also a Functor instance, it should satisfy

foldMap f = fold . fmap f

which implies that

foldMap f . fmap g = foldMap (f . g)

Give the ability to fold a collection on itself

Efficient enumeration of subsets of triangular elements. Given a list [1..n] we want to enumerate a subset [(i,j)] of ordered pairs in such a way that we only have to hold the elements necessary for this subset in memory.

Equivalent of Foldable for rank 2 data types

Class of data structures that can be folded to a summary value.

Deprecated: Use Data.Aeson.Extra.Recursive module

This shows how Foldable is basically Recursive specialized to lists. The true operation of Foldable is toList. As these few operations have the usual signatures, the rest of the type class can be implemented in the as in base.

Foldable class, generalised to use arrows in categories other than ->. This changes the interface somewhat – in particular, foldr relies on currying and hence can't really be expressed in a category without exponential objects; however the monoidal folds come out quite nicely. (Of course, it's debatable how much sense the Hask-Monoid class even makes in other categories.) Unlike with the Functor classes, there is no derived instance Foldable f => Foldable f (->) (->): in this case, it would prevent some genarality. See below for how to define such an instance manually.