Haskell avoiding stack overflow in folds without sacrificing performance

The following piece of code experiences a stack overflow for large inputs:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveDataTypeable, OverloadedStrings #-}
import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy.Char8 as L


genTweets :: L.ByteString -> L.ByteString
genTweets text | L.null text = ""
               | otherwise = L.intercalate "\n\n" $ genTweets' $ L.words text
  where genTweets' txt = foldr p [] txt
          where p word [] = [word]
                p word words@(w:ws) | L.length word + L.length w <= 139 =
                                        (word `L.append` " " `L.append` w):ws
                                    | otherwise = word:words

I assume my predicate is building a list of thunks, but I'm not sure why, or how to fix it.

The equivalent code using foldl' runs fine, but takes forever, since it appends constantly, and uses a ton of memory.

import Data.List (foldl')

genTweetsStrict :: L.ByteString -> L.ByteString
genTweetsStrict text | L.null text = "" 
                     | otherwise = L.intercalate "\n\n" $ genTweetsStrict' $ L.words text
  where genTweetsStrict' txt = foldl' p [] txt
          where p [] word = [word]
                p words word | L.length word + L.length (last words) <= 139 =
                                init words ++ [last words `L.append` " " `L.append` word]
                             | otherwise = words ++ [word]

What is causing the first snippet to build up thunks, and can it be avoided? Is it possible to write the second snippet so that it doesn't rely on (++)?

Solution

L.length word + L.length (last words) <= 139

This is the problem. On each iteration, you're traversing the accumulator list, and then

init words ++ [last words `L.append` " " `L.append` word]

appending at the end. Obviously this going to take a long time (proportional to the length of the accumulator list). A better solution is to generate the output list lazily, interleaving processing with reading the input stream (you don't need to read the whole input to output the first 140-character tweet).

The following version of your program processes a relatively large file (/usr/share/dict/words) in under a 1 second time, while using O(1) space:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings, BangPatterns #-}

module Main where

import qualified Data.ByteString.Lazy.Char8 as L
import Data.Int (Int64)

genTweets :: L.ByteString -> L.ByteString
genTweets text | L.null text = ""
               | otherwise   = L.intercalate "\n\n" $ toTweets $ L.words text
  where

    -- Concatenate words into 139-character tweets.
    toTweets :: [L.ByteString] -> [L.ByteString]
    toTweets []     = []
    toTweets [w]    = [w]
    toTweets (w:ws) = go (L.length w, w) ws

    -- Main loop. Notice how the output tweet (cur_str) is generated as soon as
    -- possible, thus enabling L.writeFile to consume it before the whole
    -- input is processed.
    go :: (Int64, L.ByteString) -> [L.ByteString] -> [L.ByteString]
    go (_cur_len, !cur_str) []     = [cur_str]
    go (!cur_len, !cur_str) (w:ws)
      | lw + cur_len <= 139        = go (cur_len + lw + 1,
                                         cur_str `L.append` " " `L.append` w) ws
      | otherwise                  = cur_str : go (lw, w) ws
      where
        lw = L.length w

-- Notice the use of lazy I/O.
main :: IO ()
main = do dict <- L.readFile "/usr/share/dict/words"
          L.writeFile "tweets" (genTweets dict)