Re: How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel functional language to the level of FORTH ?

[Paul Rubin]

Nathan <nbeenken@gmail.com> writes:
> functionality you've been asking about in Ruby.
>
> my_list = [1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 1, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5]
> print my_list.reduce([]){|x, y|
>   if x.empty? or x[x.length-1] != y then
>     x + [y]
>   else
>     x
>   end
> }

That is pretty ugly; in Haskell you could write

   my_list = [1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 1, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5]
   main = print [head xs | xs <- group my_list]

That uses a Python-like list comprehension since you mentioned Python,
but more idiomatic would be

   my_list = [1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, 1, 1, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5]
   main = print . map head . group $ my_list

There is probably a function like "group" available in Ruby.  Python has
itertools.groupby but it's a little bit brittle.