Zipping with padding in Haskell

How about custom head and tail functions (named next and rest in my example below)?

import Data.Monoid

zipPad :: (Monoid a, Monoid b) => [a] -> [b] -> [(a,b)]
zipPad [] [] = []
zipPad xs ys = (next xs, next ys) : zipPad (rest xs) (rest ys)

zipPad3 :: (Monoid a, Monoid b, Monoid c) => [a] -> [b] -> [c] -> [(a,b,c)]
zipPad3 [] [] [] = []
zipPad3 xs ys zs = (next xs, next ys, next zs) : zipPad3 (rest xs) (rest ys) (rest zs)

next :: (Monoid a) => [a] -> a
next [] = mempty
next xs = head xs

rest :: (Monoid a) => [a] -> [a]
rest [] = []
rest xs = tail xs

Test snippet:

instance Monoid Int where
  mempty = 0
  mappend = (+)

main = do
  print $ zipPad [1,2,3,4 :: Int] [1,2 :: Int]
  print $ zipPad3 [1,2,3,4 :: Int] [9 :: Int] [1,2 :: Int]

Its output:

[(1,1),(2,2),(3,0),(4,0)]
[(1,9,1),(2,0,2),(3,0,0),(4,0,0)]

This pattern comes up quite a lot. A solution I learned from Paul Chiusano is as follows:

data These a b = This a | That b | These a b

class Align f where
  align :: (These a b -> c) -> f a -> f b -> f c

instance Align [] where
  align f []     []     = []
  align f (x:xs) []     = f (This x)    : align f xs []
  align f []     (y:ys) = f (That y)    : align f [] ys
  align f (x:xs) (y:ys) = f (These x y) : align f xs ys

liftAlign2 f a b = align t
  where t (This l)    = f l b
        t (That r)    = f a r
        t (These l r) = f l r

zipPad a b = liftAlign2 (,) a b

liftAlign3 f a b c xs ys = align t (zipPad a b xs ys)
  where t (This  (x,y))   = f x y c
        t (That  r)       = f a b r
        t (These (x,y) r) = f x y r

zipPad3 a b c = liftAlign3 (,,) a b c

A little test in ghci:

 *Main> zipPad3 ["foo", "bar", "baz"] [2, 4, 6, 8] [True, False] "" 0 False
 [("foo",2,True),("bar",4,False),("baz",6,False),("",8,False)]

A simpler way to do this is with Maybe. I will illustrate with Edward's more general formulation:

import Data.Maybe
import Control.Applicative

zipWithTails l r f as bs = catMaybes . takeWhile isJust $
    zipWith fMaybe (extend as) (extend bs)
  where
    extend xs = map Just xs ++ repeat Nothing
    fMaybe a b = liftA2 f a b <|> fmap l a <|> fmap r b