How do I get a list item by index in elm?

Question

I got a list, and now I want the nth item. In Haskell I would use !!, but I can't find an elm variant of that.

Answer 1

There is no equivalent of this in Elm. You could of course implement it yourself.

(Note: This is not a "total" function, so it creates an exception when the index is out of range).

infixl 9 !!
(!!) : [a] -> Int -> a
xs !! n  = head (drop n xs)

A better way would be to define a total function, using the Maybe data type.

infixl 9 !!
(!!) : [a] -> Int -> Maybe a
xs !! n  = 
  if | n < 0     -> Nothing
     | otherwise -> case (xs,n) of
         ([],_)    -> Nothing
         (x::xs,0) -> Just x
         (_::xs,n) -> xs !! (n-1)