How to count the number of iterations in a for comprehension in Scala? - scala

Question

I am using a for comprehension on a stream and I would like to know how many iterations took to get o the final results.
In code:
var count = 0
for {
xs <- xs_generator
x <- xs
count = count + 1 //doesn't work!!
if (x prop)
yield x
}
Is there a way to achieve this?

Answer 1

Edit: If you don't want to return only the first item, but the entire stream of solutions, take a look at the second part.
Edit-2: Shorter version with zipWithIndex appended.
It's not entirely clear what you are attempting to do. To me it seems as if you are trying to find something in a stream of lists, and additionaly save the number of checked elements.
If this is what you want, consider doing something like this:
/** Returns `x` that satisfies predicate `prop`
* as well the the total number of tested `x`s
*/
def findTheX(): (Int, Int) = {
val xs_generator = Stream.from(1).map(a => (1 to a).toList).take(1000)
var count = 0
def prop(x: Int): Boolean = x % 317 == 0
for (xs <- xs_generator; x <- xs) {
count += 1
if (prop(x)) {
return (x, count)
}
}
throw new Exception("No solution exists")
}
println(findTheX())
// prints:
// (317,50403)
Several important points:
Scala's for-comprehension have nothing to do with Python's "yield". Just in case you thought they did: re-read the documentation on for-comprehensions.
There is no built-in syntax for breaking out of for-comprehensions. It's better to wrap it into a function, and then call return. There is also breakable though, but it works with Exceptions.
The function returns the found item and the total count of checked items, therefore the return type is (Int, Int).
The error in the end after the for-comprehension is to ensure that the return type is Nothing <: (Int, Int) instead of Unit, which is not a subtype of (Int, Int).
Think twice when you want to use Stream for such purposes in this way: after generating the first few elements, the Stream holds them in memory. This might lead to "GC-overhead limit exceeded"-errors if the Stream isn't used properly.
Just to emphasize it again: the yield in Scala for-comprehensions is unrelated to Python's yield. Scala has no built-in support for coroutines and generators. You don't need them as often as you might think, but it requires some readjustment.
EDIT
I've re-read your question again. In case that you want an entire stream of solutions together with a counter of how many different xs have been checked, you might use something like that instead:
val xs_generator = Stream.from(1).map(a => (1 to a).toList)
var count = 0
def prop(x: Int): Boolean = x % 317 == 0
val xsWithCounter = for {
xs <- xs_generator;
x <- xs
_ = { count = count + 1 }
if (prop(x))
} yield (x, count)
println(xsWithCounter.take(10).toList)
// prints:
// List(
// (317,50403), (317,50721), (317,51040), (317,51360), (317,51681),
// (317,52003), (317,52326), (317,52650), (317,52975), (317,53301)
// )
Note the _ = { ... } part. There is a limited number of things that can occur in a for-comprehension:
generators (the x <- things)
filters/guards (if-s)
value definitions
Here, we sort-of abuse the value-definition syntax to update the counter. We use the block { counter += 1 } as the right hand side of the assignment. It returns Unit. Since we don't need the result of the block, we use _ as the left hand side of the assignment. In this way, this block is executed once for every x.
EDIT-2
If mutating the counter is not your main goal, you can of course use the zipWithIndex directly:
val xsWithCounter =
xs_generator.flatten.zipWithIndex.filter{x => prop(x._1)}
It gives almost the same result as the previous version, but the indices are shifted by -1 (it's the indices, not the number of tried x-s).