Haskell function application and currying

Question

I am always interested in learning new languages, a fact that keeps me on my toes and makes me (I believe) a better programmer. My attempts at conquering Haskell come and go - t

Answer 1

You're overthinking this problem. You can work it all out using simple equational reasoning. Let's try it from scratch:

permute = foldr (concatMap . ins) [[]]

This can be converted trivially to:

permute lst = foldr (concatMap . ins) [[]] lst

concatMap can be defined as:

concatMap f lst = concat (map f lst)

The way foldr works on a list is that (for instance):

-- let lst = [x, y, z]
foldr f init lst
= foldr f init [x, y, z]
= foldr f init (x : y : z : [])
= f x (f y (f z init))

So something like

permute [1, 2, 3]

becomes:

foldr (concatMap . ins) [[]] [1, 2, 3]
= (concatMap . ins) 1 
    ((concatMap . ins) 2
       ((concatMap . ins) 3 [[]]))

Let's work through the first expression:

(concatMap . ins) 3 [[]]
= (\x -> concatMap (ins x)) 3 [[]]  -- definition of (.)
= (concatMap (ins 3)) [[]]
= concatMap (ins 3) [[]]     -- parens are unnecessary
= concat (map (ins 3) [[]])  -- definition of concatMap

Now ins 3 [] == [3], so

map (ins 3) [[]] == (ins 3 []) : []  -- definition of map
= [3] : []
= [[3]]

So our original expression becomes:

foldr (concatMap . ins) [[]] [1, 2, 3]
= (concatMap . ins) 1 
    ((concatMap . ins) 2
       ((concatMap . ins) 3 [[]]))
= (concatMap . ins) 1 
    ((concatMap . ins) 2 [[3]]

Let's work through

(concatMap . ins) 2 [[3]]
= (\x -> concatMap (ins x)) 2 [[3]]
= (concatMap (ins 2)) [[3]]
= concatMap (ins 2) [[3]]     -- parens are unnecessary
= concat (map (ins 2) [[3]])  -- definition of concatMap
= concat (ins 2 [3] : [])
= concat ([[2, 3], [3, 2]] : [])
= concat [[[2, 3], [3, 2]]]
= [[2, 3], [3, 2]]

So our original expression becomes:

foldr (concatMap . ins) [[]] [1, 2, 3]
= (concatMap . ins) 1 [[2, 3], [3, 2]]
= (\x -> concatMap (ins x)) 1 [[2, 3], [3, 2]]
= concatMap (ins 1) [[2, 3], [3, 2]]
= concat (map (ins 1) [[2, 3], [3, 2]])
= concat [ins 1 [2, 3], ins 1 [3, 2]] -- definition of map
= concat [[[1, 2, 3], [2, 1, 3], [2, 3, 1]], 
          [[1, 3, 2], [3, 1, 2], [3, 2, 1]]]  -- defn of ins
= [[1, 2, 3], [2, 1, 3], [2, 3, 1], 
   [1, 3, 2], [3, 1, 2], [3, 2, 1]]

Nothing magical here. I think you may have been confused because it's easy to assume that concatMap = concat . map, but this is not the case. Similarly, it may seem like concatMap f = concat . (map f), but this isn't true either. Equational reasoning will show you why.