I was playing with the Maybe type and realised that there are useful functions provided to play with these types.

Then I realised that in my definition of ternary operator in haskell the definition of (!)

 > Nothing ! a = a
 > Just b  ! _ = b

was very similar to the predefined function fromMaybe (only with its arguments reversed)

In fact, we can define the ternary operator using functions defined in Data.Maybe!

 > (?) = boolToMaybe
 > (!) = flip fromMaybe

Ok ok, that's not quite true. boolToMaybe doesn't exist in Data.Maybe, but the similar listToMaybe does.

We'd have to define

 > boolToMaybe True  a = Just a 
 > boolToMaybe False _ = Nothing

Or, a cute but less clear version (that makes clear the heritage with listToMaybe):

 > boolToMaybe b v = listToMaybe $ filter (const b) [v]