Parallel list comprehensions are a natural extension to list comprehensions. List comprehensions can be thought of as a nice syntax for writing maps and filters. Parallel comprehensions extend this to include the zipWith family.
A parallel list comprehension has multiple independent branches of qualifier lists, each separated by a `|' symbol. For example, the following zips together two lists:
[ (x, y) | x <- xs | y <- ys ] |
The behavior of parallel list comprehensions follows that of zip, in that the resulting list will have the same length as the shortest branch.
We can define parallel list comprehensions by translation to regular comprehensions. Here's the basic idea:
Given a parallel comprehension of the form:
[ e | p1 <- e11, p2 <- e12, ...
| q1 <- e21, q2 <- e22, ...
...
] |
This will be translated to:
[ e | ((p1,p2), (q1,q2), ...) <- zipN [(p1,p2) | p1 <- e11, p2 <- e12, ...]
[(q1,q2) | q1 <- e21, q2 <- e22, ...]
...
] |
where `zipN' is the appropriate zip for the given number of branches.