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Feature #14423

closed

Enumerator from single object

Added by zverok (Victor Shepelev) about 6 years ago. Updated over 1 year ago.

Status:
Closed
Assignee:
-
Target version:
-
[ruby-core:85251]

Description

UPD: Current proposal

Introduce method Object#enumerate for producing infinite enumerator by applying block to result of previous call.

Reference implementation:

class Object
  def enumerate(&block)
    Enumerator.new { |y|
      val = self
      y << val
      loop do
        val = block.call(val)
        y << val
      end
    }
  end
end

Possible usages:

# Most idiomatic "infinite sequence" possible:
p 1.enumerate(&:succ).take(5)
# => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

# Easy Fibonacci
p [0, 1].enumerate { |f0, f1| [f1, f0 + f1] }.take(10).map(&:first)
#=> [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]

# Enumerable pagination
page.enumerate { |page| Faraday.get(page.next) if page.next }.take_while { |p| !p.nil? }

Reference to similar things:

  • Clojure iterate "Returns a lazy sequence of x, (f x), (f (f x)) etc." No converging, just infinite sequence... And maybe that is even more basic and idiomatic. The name is nice, too.
  • WolframLang FixedPoint
  • Ramda converge
  • Elixir Stream#unfold (ends iteration when nil is returned)
  • Scala Iterator#iterate (just infinite sequence)

Initial proposal

Sometimes (or rather often), there is a programming pattern of "start from one object, do something, look at the result, do the same, look at the result (and so on)".

Examples:

  • fetch page by URL, if pagination present, fetch next page;
  • take 10 jobs from the queue, process them, exit when queue is empty;

Typically, those are represented by while or loop + break which somehow feels "not functional enough", and even "not Ruby enough", so much less expressive than map and other Enumerable/Enumerator-based cycles.

In some functional languages or libraries, there is function named FixedPoint or converge, whose meaning is "take an initial value, repeat the block provided on the result on prev computation, till it will not 'stable'". I believe this notion can be useful for Rubyists too.

Reference implementation (name is disputable!):

class Object
  def converge(&block)
    Enumerator.new { |y|
      prev = self
      y << self
      loop do
        cur = block.call(prev)
        raise StopIteration if cur == prev
        y << cur
        prev = cur
      end
    }
  end
end

Examples of usage:

# Functional kata: find the closest number to sqrt(2):
1.0.converge { |x| (x + 2 / x) / 2 }.to_a.last # => 1.414213562373095
Math.sqrt(2) # => 1.4142135623730951

# Next page situation:
get(url).converge { |page| page.next } 
# => returns [page, page.next, page.next.next, ...til the result is nil, or same page repeated]

# Job queue situation:
queue.top(10).converge { |jobs| 
  jobs.each(&:perform)
  queue.top(10) 
}
# => takes top 10 jobs, till queue is empty (`[]` is returned two successful times)

# Useful for non-converging situations, too:
2.converge { |x| x ** 2 }.take(4)
# => [2, 4, 16, 256]

# Idiomatic Fibonacci:
[0, 1].converge { |f0, f1| [f1, f0 + f1] }.take(10).map(&:first)
# => [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]

Reference to similar things:

  • Clojure iterate "Returns a lazy sequence of x, (f x), (f (f x)) etc." No converging, just infinite sequence... And maybe that is even more basic and idiomatic. The name is nice, too.
  • WolframLang FixedPoint
  • Ramda converge
  • Elixir Stream#unfold (ends iteration when nil is returned)
  • Scala Iterator#iterate (just infinite sequence)

Possible call-seq:

  • If converges: Object#converge(&block), Enumerator.converge(object, &block);
  • If just an infinite sequence: Object#iterate(&block), Object#deduce(&block) (as opposed to reduce), Enumerator.iterate(object, &block), Enumerator#enumerate(object, &block).

WDYT?..

PS: Can imagine somebody already proposed that, yet can't find nothing similar in the tracker for all keywords I've tried.

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