:: String -> [String] package:ghc

Splits the argument into a list of lines stripped of their terminating \n characters. The \n terminator is optional in a final non-empty line of the argument string. For example:

>>> lines ""           -- empty input contains no lines
[]

>>> lines "\n"         -- single empty line
[""]

>>> lines "one"        -- single unterminated line
["one"]

>>> lines "one\n"      -- single non-empty line
["one"]

>>> lines "one\n\n"    -- second line is empty
["one",""]

>>> lines "one\ntwo"   -- second line is unterminated
["one","two"]

>>> lines "one\ntwo\n" -- two non-empty lines
["one","two"]

When the argument string is empty, or ends in a \n character, it can be recovered by passing the result of lines to the unlines function. Otherwise, unlines appends the missing terminating \n. This makes unlines . lines idempotent:

(unlines . lines) . (unlines . lines) = (unlines . lines)

words breaks a string up into a list of words, which were delimited by white space (as defined by isSpace). This function trims any white spaces at the beginning and at the end.

>>> words "Lorem ipsum\ndolor"
["Lorem","ipsum","dolor"]

>>> words " foo bar "
["foo","bar"]