Is there any way to separate infinite and finite lists?

Question

For example, I am writing some function for lists and I want to use length function

foo :: [a] -> Bool
foo xs = length xs == 100

How can

Answer 1

There are a couple different ways to make a finite list type. The first is simply to make lists strict in their spines:

data FList a = Nil | Cons a !(FList a)

Unfortunately, this throws away all efficiency benefits of laziness. Some of these can be recovered by using length-indexed lists instead:

{-# LANGUAGE GADTs #-}
{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds #-}
{-# LANGUAGE KindSignatures #-}
{-# LANGUAGE ScopedTypeVariables #-}
{-# OPTIONS_GHC -fwarn-incomplete-patterns #-}

data Nat = Z | S Nat deriving (Show, Read, Eq, Ord)

data Vec :: Nat -> * -> * where
  Nil :: Vec 'Z a
  Cons :: a -> Vec n a -> Vec ('S n) a

instance Functor (Vec n) where
  fmap _f Nil = Nil
  fmap f (Cons x xs) = Cons (f x) (fmap f xs)

data FList :: * -> * where
  FList :: Vec n a -> FList a

instance Functor FList where
  fmap f (FList xs) = FList (fmap f xs)

fcons :: a -> FList a -> FList a
fcons x (FList xs) = FList (Cons x xs)

funcons :: FList a -> Maybe (a, FList a)
funcons (FList Nil) = Nothing
funcons (FList (Cons x xs)) = Just (x, FList xs)

-- Foldable and Traversable instances are straightforward
-- as well, and in recent GHC versions, Foldable brings
-- along a definition of length.

GHC does not allow infinite types, so there's no way to build an infinite Vec and thus no way to build an infinite FList (1). However, an FList can be transformed and consumed somewhat lazily, with the cache and garbage collection benefits that entails.

(1) Note that the type system forces fcons to be strict in its FList argument, so any attempt to tie a knot with FList will bottom out.