Haskell: Purpose of the flip function?

Question

I am a bit surprised that this was not asked before. Maybe it is a stupid question.

I know that flip is changing the order of two arguments.

Example:

(-) 5 3
= 5 - 3
= 2

flip (-) 5 3
= 3 - 5
= -2

But why would I need such a function? Why not just change the inputs manually?

Why not just write:

(-) 3 5
= 3 - 5
= -2

Answer 1

One is unlikely to ever use the flip function on a function that is immediately applied to two or more arguments, but flip can be useful in two situations:

1. If the function is passed higher-order to a different function, one cannot simply reverse the arguments at the call site, since the call site is in another function! For example, these two expressions produce very different results:

   ghci> foldl (-) 0 [1, 2, 3, 4]
   -10
   ghci> foldl (flip (-)) 0 [1, 2, 3, 4]
   2
   

   In this case, we cannot swap the arguments of (-) because we do not apply (-) directly; foldl applies it for us. So we can use flip (-) instead of writing out the whole lambda \x y -> y - x.

2. Additionally, it can be useful to use flip to partially apply a function to its second argument. For example, we could use flip to write a function that builds an infinite list using a builder function that is provided the element’s index in the list:

   buildList :: (Integer -> a) -> [a]
   buildList = flip map [0..]
   

   ghci> take 10 (buildList (\x -> x * x))
   [0,1,4,9,16,25,36,49,64,81]
   

   Perhaps more frequently, this is used when we want to partially apply the second argument of a function that will be used higher-order, like in the first example:

   ghci> map (flip map [1, 2, 3]) [(+ 1), (* 2)]
   [[2,3,4],[2,4,6]]
   

   Sometimes, instead of using flip in a case like this, people will use infix syntax instead, since operator sections have the unique property that they can supply the first or second argument to a function. Therefore, writing (`f` x) is equivalent to writing flip f x. Personally, I think writing flip directly is usually easier to read, but that’s a matter of taste.

Answer 2

One very useful example of flip usage is sorting in descending order. You can see how it works in ghci:

ghci> import Data.List

ghci> :t sortBy 
sortBy :: (a -> a -> Ordering) -> [a] -> [a]

ghci> :t compare
compare :: Ord a => a -> a -> Ordering

ghci> sortBy compare [2,1,3]
[1,2,3]

ghci> sortBy (flip compare) [2,1,3]
[3,2,1]

Answer 3

Sometimes you'll want to use a function by supplying the second parameter but take it's first parameter from somewhere else. For example:

map (flip (-) 5) [1..5]

Though this can also be written as:

map (\x -> x - 5) [1..5]

Another use case is when the second argument is long:

flip (-) 5 $
   if odd x
      then x + 1
      else x

But you can always use a let expression to name the first parameter computation and then not use flip.