Feature #14781
Updated by zverok (Victor Shepelev) over 5 years ago
This is alternative proposal to `Object#enumerate` (#14423), which was considered by many as a good idea, but with unsure naming and too radical (`Object` extension). This one is _less_ radical, and, at the same time, more powerful.
**Synopsys**:
* `Enumerator.generate(initial, &block)`: produces infinite sequence where each next element is calculated by applying block to previous; `initial` is first sequence element;
* `Enumerator.generate(&block)`: the same; first element of sequence is a result of calling the block with no args.
This method allows to produce enumerators replacing a lot of common `while` and `loop` cycles in the same way `#each` replaces `for`.
**Examples:**
With initial value
```ruby
# Infinite sequence
p Enumerator.generate(1, &:succ).take(5)
# => [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
# Easy Fibonacci
p Enumerator.generate([0, 1]) { |f0, f1| [f1, f0 + f1] }.take(10).map(&:first)
#=> [0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34]
require 'date'
# Find next Tuesday
p Enumerator.generate(Date.today, &:succ).detect { |d| d.wday == 2 }
# => #<Date: 2018-05-22 ((2458261j,0s,0n),+0s,2299161j)>
# Tree navigation
# ---------------
require 'nokogiri'
require 'open-uri'
# Find some element on page, then make list of all parents
p Nokogiri::HTML(open('https://www.ruby-lang.org/en/'))
.at('a:contains("Ruby 2.2.10 Released")')
.yield_self { |a| Enumerator.generate(a, &:parent) }
.take_while { |node| node.respond_to?(:parent) }
.map(&:name)
# => ["a", "h3", "div", "div", "div", "div", "div", "div", "body", "html"]
# Pagination
# ----------
require 'octokit'
Octokit.stargazers('rails/rails')
# ^ this method returned just an array, but have set `.last_response` to full response, with data
# and pagination. So now we can do this:
p Enumerator.generate(Octokit.last_response) { |response|
response.rels[:next].get # pagination: `get` fetches next Response
}
.first(3) # take just 3 pages of stargazers
.flat_map(&:data) # `data` is parsed response content (stargazers themselves)
.map { |h| h[:login] }
# => ["wycats", "brynary", "macournoyer", "topfunky", "tomtt", "jamesgolick", ...
```
Without initial value
```ruby
# Random search
target = 7
p Enumerator.generate { rand(10) }.take_while { |i| i != target }.to_a
# => [0, 6, 3, 5,....]
# External while condition
require 'strscan'
scanner = StringScanner.new('7+38/6')
p Enumerator.generate { scanner.scan(%r{\d+|[-+*/]}) }.slice_after }.take_while { scanner.eos? }.first !scanner.eos? }.to_a
# => ["7", "+", "38", "/", "6"] "/"]
# Potential message loop system:
Enumerator.generate { Message.receive }.take_while { |msg| msg != :exit }
```
**Reference implementation**: https://github.com/zverok/enumerator_generate
I want to **thank** all peers that participated in the discussion here, on Twitter and Reddit.