Functional Programming with Haskell
There are many functional programming languages, and Haskell is one of them. This article covers some aspects of functional programming with Haskell. It assumes that you are familiar with lists, functions, loops, and recursion. <!--more-->
The basics of functional programming
Functional programming is all about writing functions and using them to create a larger program. Besides, functional languages don't allow you to change a variable's value once you define it.
As a result, you can substitute the value anywhere you see the expression. This idea is called referential transparency.
Haskell is lazy
Haskell uses a non-strict ("lazy") evaluation. This means expressions aren't evaluated unless it's necessary. Here's an example of lazy evaluation preventing errors from being detected:
myfunc a b = a + 1
-- myfunc takes in two nums a and b
-- returns the result of a + 1
Example use:
myfunc 2 (1 / 0)
=> 3
Hold on, why didn't Haskell raise a division by zero error?
When myfunc is called with arguments a = 2 and b = 1 / 0, only a gets evaluated because the
function body is a + 1. Since b = 1 / 0 is never evaluated, no division by zero error is raised.
Lazy evaluation brings up another interesting quirk in Haskell: infinite lists.
Haskell doesn't bring up an error when we create the following list:
x = [1 ..] -- create an infinite list with all the natural numbers
take 5 x -- take the first 5 elements from x and return them
=> [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
So what happened? Why doesn't Haskell inform us that we have a never-ending list?
Just like before, Haskell performed the lazy evaluation.
When we said take 5 x, Haskell only took the first 5 elements and evaluated them. We didn't need the last element of the list, so Haskell never bothered to look for it.
Thus, Haskell raised no infinite list error.
Pattern matching with functions
Pattern matching is frequently used instead of if-statements for conciseness. Let's see an example by writing a function that returns the first element in a list.
-- getFirst takes in a list and returns the first element
getFirst [] = error "Unable to get first element"
getFirst (first:rest) = first
The function getFirst says: if the input list is empty (i.e., there is no "first" element), then raise an error.
Otherwise, we assume the input list must have at least one element. We split the list into (first:rest), where first is the first element of the list, and rest is the remaining sublist.
For example, getFirst [1,2,3] evaluates first = 1 and rest = [2,3].
Example function use:
getFirst [5, 9, 3]
=> 5
getFirst [7, 0, 0]
=> 7
So why should you use pattern matching?
Pattern matching is useful for catching errors in your code. Since the syntax is more compact than an if-statements, your code becomes easier to read. In addition, Haskell generates a warning if you are missing cases in your pattern matching.
In the getFirst example, if we forgot to handle the empty list case, the compiler would warn us. Without pattern matching, no warning would be issued, and the bug could be left undetected.
Repeating tasks with Haskell
You might be familiar with using for loops to repeat a task multiple times. Functional languages use recursion instead.
Consider the following problem: we take a list of numbers, and we want to find the sum of all the elements.
A Python programmer might solve the problem like this:
lst = [1, 2, 3]
total = 0
for num in lst:
total += num # add each number to the total
print (total)
How would we solve this problem in a functional language? Recall that functional languages don't use loops. Instead, we can use pattern matching and recursion to perform iterative tasks.
-- getTotal takes in a list of numbers and returns the sum of all the elements
getTotal [] = 0 -- base case: the total for an empty list is 0
getTotal (first:rest) = first + (getTotal rest)
Example use:
getTotal [1,2,3] -- add up all the elements in [1,2,3]
=> 6
getTotal []
=> 0
Being familiar with recursion is essential for functional programming. Recursion is the primary way to repeatedly perform a task in Haskell. Consequently, programmers should not forget the base case when they solve problems recursively. Avoiding infinite recursion ensures that our task repetition will end at some point.
Putting Haskell to use
Generally, Haskell is present in academia. However, the use of Haskell is increasing in the industry. For instance, the finance industry uses functional languages. According to the Haskell Wiki, the Deutsche Bank utilizes Haskell for its software infrastructure. Unfortunately, Haskell has developed "a reputation for being hard to learn", but this may change as more reference material is developed.
More resources for Haskell
You've learned ideas such as referential transparency, lazy evaluation, and pattern-matching in Haskell. You've also seen that recursion is used instead of for-loops, and it can make code a lot more concise.
These topics are not exclusive to Haskell; they can be applied to other functional languages as well. To learn more about these concepts, I encourage you to read Learn You a Haskell, which is available for free online.
The HaskellWiki is another excellent resource for beginners.
Happy Coding!
Peer Review Contributions by: Lalithnarayan C
