The recursion for foldr f x ys
where ys = [y1,y2,...,yk]
looks like
f y1 (f y2 (... (f yk x) ...))
whereas the recursion for foldl f x ys
looks like
f (... (f (f x y1) y2) ...) yk
An important difference here is that if the result of f x y
can be computed using only the value of x
, then foldr
doesn’t’ need to examine the entire list. For example
foldr (&&) False (repeat False)
returns False
whereas
foldl (&&) False (repeat False)
never terminates. (Note: repeat False
creates an infinite list where every element is False
.)
On the other hand, foldl'
is tail recursive and strict. If you know that you’ll have to traverse the whole list no matter what (e.g., summing the numbers in a list), then foldl'
is more space- (and probably time-) efficient than foldr
.