Haskell: Splitting a list into 2 at index k

haskelllistsplit

I'm pretty new to Haskell, and I'm having a little trouble. I'm trying to implement a function that takes a list, and an int. the int is supposed to be the index k at which the list is split into a pair of lists. The first one containing the first k elements of the list, and the second from k+1 to the last element. Here's what I have so far:

split :: [a] -> Int -> ([a], [a])
split [] k = error "Empty list!"
split (x:[]) k = ([x],[])
split xs k | k >= (length xs) = error "Number out of range!"
           | k < 0 = error "Number out of range!"

I can't actually figure out how to do the split. Any help would be appreciated.

Best Answer

First of all, note that the function you are trying to construct is already in the standard library, in the Prelude - it is called splitAt. Now, directly looking at its definition is confusing, as there are two algorithms, one which doesn't use the standard recursive structure at all -splitAt n xs = (take n xs, drop n xs) - and one that is hand-optimized making it ugly. The former makes more intuitive sense, as you are simply taking a prefix and a suffix and putting them in a pair. However, the latter teaches more, and has this overall structure:

splitAt :: Int -> [a] -> ([a], [a])
splitAt 0 xs     = ([], xs)
splitAt _ []     = ([], [])
splitAt n (x:xs) = (x:xs', xs'')
  where
    (xs', xs'') = splitAt (n - 1) xs

The basic idea is that if a list is made up of a head and a tail (it is of the form x:xs), then the list going from index k+1 onwards will be the same as the list going from k onwards once you remove the first element - drop (k + 1) (x : xs) == drop k xs. To construct the prefix, you similarly remove the first element, take a smaller prefix, and stick the element back on - take (k + 1) (x : xs) == x : take k xs.

Caveats follow

Note that while this is perhaps the cleanest way to answer the question as asked, index is a rather weak component of the list API, and I can't remember the last time I used it in anger. It's been pointed out to me in the comments that because this answer is heavily referenced, it should be made more complete. Some caveats about list.index follow. It is probably worth initially taking a look at the documentation for it:

list.index(x[, start[, end]])
Return zero-based index in the list of the first item whose value is equal to x. Raises a ValueError if there is no such item.

The optional arguments start and end are interpreted as in the slice notation and are used to limit the search to a particular subsequence of the list. The returned index is computed relative to the beginning of the full sequence rather than the start argument.

Linear time-complexity in list length

An index call checks every element of the list in order, until it finds a match. If your list is long, and you don't know roughly where in the list it occurs, this search could become a bottleneck. In that case, you should consider a different data structure. Note that if you know roughly where to find the match, you can give index a hint. For instance, in this snippet, l.index(999_999, 999_990, 1_000_000) is roughly five orders of magnitude faster than straight l.index(999_999), because the former only has to search 10 entries, while the latter searches a million:

>>> import timeit
>>> timeit.timeit('l.index(999_999)', setup='l = list(range(0, 1_000_000))', number=1000)
9.356267921015387
>>> timeit.timeit('l.index(999_999, 999_990, 1_000_000)', setup='l = list(range(0, 1_000_000))', number=1000)
0.0004404920036904514

Only returns the index of the first match to its argument

A call to index searches through the list in order until it finds a match, and stops there. If you expect to need indices of more matches, you should use a list comprehension, or generator expression.

>>> [1, 1].index(1)
0
>>> [i for i, e in enumerate([1, 2, 1]) if e == 1]
[0, 2]
>>> g = (i for i, e in enumerate([1, 2, 1]) if e == 1)
>>> next(g)
0
>>> next(g)
2

Most places where I once would have used index, I now use a list comprehension or generator expression because they're more generalizable. So if you're considering reaching for index, take a look at these excellent Python features.

Throws if element not present in list

A call to index results in a ValueError if the item's not present.

>>> [1, 1].index(2)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ValueError: 2 is not in list

If the item might not be present in the list, you should either

Check for it first with item in my_list (clean, readable approach), or
Wrap the index call in a try/except block which catches ValueError (probably faster, at least when the list to search is long, and the item is usually present.)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Python – How to check if a list is empty

Python – Finding the index of an item in a list

Caveats follow

Linear time-complexity in list length

Only returns the index of the first match to its argument

Throws if element not present in list

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