Is there such a thing as maximumWith?

Specifically I'm searching for a function 'maximumWith',

maximumWith :: (Foldable f, Ord b) => (a -> b) -> f a -> a

Which behaves in the following way:

maximumWith length [[1, 2], [0, 1, 3]] == [0, 1, 3]
maximumWith null [[(+), (*)], []] == []
maximumWith (const True) x == head x

My use case is picking the longest word in a list.
For this I'd like something akin to maximumWith length.

I'd thought such a thing existed, since sortWith etc. exist.

Solution

Let me collect all the notes in the comments together...

Let's look at sort. There are 4 functions in the family:

sortBy is the actual implementation.
sort = sortBy compare uses Ord overloading.
sortWith = sortBy . comparing is the analogue of your desired maximumWith. However, this function has an issue. The ranking of an element is given by applying the given mapping function to it. However, the ranking is not memoized, so if an element needs to compared multiple times, the ranking will be recomputed. You can only use it guilt-free if the ranking function is very cheap. Such functions include selectors (e.g. fst), and newtype constructors. YMMV on simple arithmetic and data constructors. Between this inefficiency, the simplicity of the definition, and its location in GHC.Exts, it's easy to deduce that it's not used that often.
sortOn fixes the inefficiency by decorating each element with its image under the ranking function in a pair, sorting by the ranks, and then erasing them.

The first two have analogues in maximum: maximumBy and maximum. sortWith has no analogy; you may as well write out maximumBy (comparing _) every time. There is also no maximumOn, even though such a thing would be more efficient. The easiest way to define a maximumOn is probably just to copy sortOn:

maximumOn :: (Functor f, Foldable f, Ord r) => (a -> r) -> f a -> a
maximumOn rank = snd . maximumBy (comparing fst) . fmap annotate
  where annotate e = let r = rank e in r `seq` (r, e)

There's a bit of interesting code in maximumBy that keeps this from optimizing properly on lists. It also works to use

maximumOn :: (Foldable f, Ord r) => (a -> r) -> f a -> a
maximumOn rank = snd . fromJust . foldl' max' Nothing
    where max' Nothing x = let r = rank x in r `seq` Just (r, x)
          max' old@(Just (ro, xo)) xn = let rn = rank xn
                                         in case ro `compare` rn of
                                                 LT -> Just (rn, xo)
                                                 _ -> old

These pragmas may be useful:

{-# SPECIALIZE maximumOn :: Ord r => (a -> r) -> [a] -> a #-}
{-# SPECIALIZE maximumOn :: (a -> Int) -> [a] -> a #-}