Finding all palindromic word pairs - haskell

Question

I came up with an unreal problem: finding all palindromic word pairs in a vocabulary, so I wrote the solution below,
import Data.List
findParis :: Ord a => [[a]] -> [[[a]]]
findPairs ss =
filter ((== 2) . length)
. groupBy ((==) . reverse)
. sortBy (compare . reverse)
$ ss
main = do
print . findPairs . permutations $ ['a'..'c']
-- malfunctioning: only got partial results [["abc","cba"]]
-- expected: [["abc","cba"],["bac","cab"],["bca","acb"]]
Could you help correct it if worthy of trying?
#Solution
Having benefited from #David Young #chi comments the tuned working code goes below,
import Data.List (delete)
import Data.Set hiding (delete, map)
findPairs :: Ord a => [[a]] -> [([a], [a])]
findPairs ss =
let
f [] = []
f (x : xs) =
let y = reverse x
in
if x /= y
then
let ss' = delete y xs
in (x, y) : f ss'
else f xs
in
f . toList
. intersection (fromList ss)
$ fromList (map reverse ss)

Answer 1

import Data.List
import Data.Ord
-- find classes of equivalence by comparing canonical forms (CF)
findEquivalentSets :: Ord b => (a->b) -> [a] -> [[a]]
findEquivalentSets toCanonical =
filter ((>=2) . length) -- has more than one
-- with the same CF?
. groupBy ((((== EQ) .) .) (comparing toCanonical)) -- group by CF
. sortBy (comparing toCanonical) -- compare CFs
findPalindromes :: Ord a => [[a]] -> [[[a]]]
findPalindromes = findEquivalentSets (\x -> min x (reverse x))
This function lets us find many kinds of equivalence as long as we can assign some effectively computable canonical form (CF) to our elements.
When looking for palindromic pairs, two strings are equivalent if one is a reverse of the other. The CF is the lexicographically smaller string.
findAnagrams :: Ord a => [[a]] -> [[[a]]]
findAnagrams = findEquivalentSets sort
In this example, two strings are equivalent if one is an anagram of the other. The CF is the sorted string (banana → aaabnn).
Likewise we can find SOUNDEX equivalents and whatnot.
This is not terribly efficient as one needs to compute the CF on each comparison. We can cache it, at the expense of readability.
findEquivalentSets :: Ord b => (a->b) -> [a] -> [[a]]
findEquivalentSets toCanonical =
map (map fst) -- strip CF
. filter ((>=2) . length) -- has more than one
-- with the same CF?
. groupBy ((((== EQ) .) .) (comparing snd)) -- group by CF
. sortBy (comparing snd) -- compare CFs
. map (\x -> (x, toCanonical x)) -- pair the element with its CF

Answer 2

Here's an approach you might want to consider.
Using sort implies that there's some keying function word2key that yields the same value for both words of a palindromic pair. The first one that comes to mind for me is
word2key w = min w (reverse w)
So, map the keying function over the list of words, sort, group by equality, take groups of length 2, and then recover the two words from the key (using the fact that the key is either equal to the word or its reverse.
Writing that, with a couple of local definitions for clarity, gives:
findPals :: (Ord a, Eq a) => [[a]] -> [[[a]]]
findPals = map (key2words . head) .
filter ((== 2) . length) .
groupBy (==) .
sort .
(map word2key)
where word2key w = min w (reverse w)
key2words k = [k, reverse k]
Edit:
I posted my answer in a stale window without refreshing, so missed the very nice response from n.m. above.
Mea culpa.
So I'll atone by mentioning that both answers are variations on the well-known (in Perl circles) "Schwartzian transform" which itself applies a common Mathematical pattern -- h = f' . g . f -- translate a task to an alternate representation in which the task is easier, do the work, then translate back to the original representation.
The Schwartzian transform tuples up a value with its corresponding key, sorts by the key, then pulls the original value back out of the key/value tuple.
The little hack I included above was based on the fact that key2words is the non-deterministic inverse relation of word2key. It is only valid when two words have the same key, but that's exactly the case in the question, and is insured by the filter.
overAndBack :: (Ord b, Eq c) => (a -> b) -> ([b] -> [c]) -> (c -> d) -> [a] -> [d]
overAndBack f g f' = map f' . g . sort . map f
findPalPairs :: (Ord a, Eq a) => [[a]] -> [[[a]]]
findPalPairs = overAndBack over just2 back
where over w = min w (reverse w)
just2 = filter ((== 2) . length) . groupBy (==)
back = (\k -> [k, reverse k]) . head
Which demos as
*Main> findPalPairs $ words "I saw no cat was on a chair"
[["no","on"],["saw","was"]]
Thanks for the nice question.