fold left operation in Scala? - scala

Question

I am having difficulty understanding how fold left works in Scala.
The following code computes for each unique character in the list chars the number of
times it occurs. For example, the invocation
times(List('a', 'b', 'a'))
should return the following (the order of the resulting list is not important):
List(('a', 2), ('b', 1))
def times(chars: List[Char]): List[(Char, Int)] = {
def incr(acc: Map[Char,Int], c: Char) = {
val count = (acc get c).getOrElse(0) + 1
acc + ((c, count));
}
val map = Map[Char, Int]()
(map /: chars)(incr).iterator.toList
}
I am just confused as to what the last line of this function is actually doing?
Any help wpuld be great.
Thanks.

Answer 1

foldLeft in scala works like this:
suppose you have a list of integers,
val nums = List(2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)
val res= nums.foldLeft(0)((m: Int, n: Int) => m + n)
you will get res=55.
lets visualise it.
val res1 = nums.foldLeft(0) { (m: Int, n: Int) => println("m: " + m + " n: " + n);
m + n }
m: 0 n: 1
m: 1 n: 2
m: 3 n: 3
m: 6 n: 4
m: 10 n: 5
m: 15 n: 6
m: 21 n: 7
m: 28 n: 8
m: 36 n: 9
m: 45 n: 10
so, we can see that we need to pass initial accumulator value in foldLeft argument. And accumulated value is stored in 'm' and next value we get in 'n'.
And finally we get the accumulator as result.

Answer 2

Let's start from the "last line" which you are asking about: as the Map trait extends Iterable which in turn extends Traversable where the operator /: is explained, the code (map /: chars)(incr) does fold-left over chars, with the initial value of the accumulator being the empty mapping from characters to integers, applying incr to each intermediate value of acc and each element c of chars.
For example, when chars is List('a', 'b', 'a', 'c'), the fold-left expression (map /: chars)(incr) equals incr(incr(incr(incr(Map[Char, Int](), 'a'), 'b'), 'a'), 'c').
Now, as for what incr does: it takes an intermediate mapping acc from characters to integers, along with a character c, and increments by 1 the integer corresponding to c in the mapping. (Strictly speaking, the mapping is immutable and therefore never mutated: instead, a new, updated mapping is created and returned. Also, getOrElse(0) says that, if c does not exist in acc, the integer to be incremented is considered 0.)
As a whole, given List('a', 'b', 'a', 'c') as chars for example, the final mapping would be List(('a', 2), ('b', 1), ('c', 1)) when converted to a list by toList.

Answer 3

I rewrote your function in a more verbose way:
def times(chars: List[Char]): List[(Char, Int)] = {
chars
.foldLeft(Map[Char, Int]()){ (acc, c) =>
acc + ((c, acc.getOrElse(c, 0) + 1))
}
.toList
}
Let's see the first steps on times("aba".toList)
First invocation:
(Map(), 'a') => Map() ++ Map(`a` -> 1)
Second invocation:
(Map(`a` -> 1), `b`) => Map('a' -> 1) ++ Map('b' ->1)
Third invocation:
(Map('a' -> 1, 'b' ->1), 'a') =>
Map('a' -> 1, 'b' ->1) ++ Map('a' -> 2) =>
Map('a' -> 2, 'b' ->1)

Answer 4

The actual implementation in the scala codebase is very concise:
def foldLeft[B](z: B)(f: (B, A) => B): B = {
var acc = z
var these = this
while (!these.isEmpty) {
acc = f(acc, these.head)
these = these.tail
}
acc
}
Let me rename stuff for clarity:
def foldLeft[B](initialValue: B)(f: (B, A) => B): B = {
//Notice that both accumulator and collectionCopy are `var`s! They are reassigned each time in the loop.
var accumulator = initialValue
//create a copy of the collection
var collectionCopy = this //the function is inside a collection class, so **this** is the collection
while (!collectionCopy.isEmpty) {
accumulator = f(accumulator , collection.head)
collectionCopy = these.tail
}
accumulator
}
Edit after comment:
Let us revisit now the the OPs function and rewrite it in an imperative manner (i.e. non-functional, which apparently is the source of confusion):
(map /: chars)(incr) is be exactly equivalent to chars.foldLeft(map)(incr), which can be imperatively rewritten as:
def foldLeft(initialValue: Map[Char,Int])(incrFunction: (Map[Char,Int], Char) => Map[Char,Int]): Map[Char,Int] = {
//Notice that both accumulator and charList are `var`s! They are reassigned each time in the loop.
var accumulator = initialValue
//create a copy of the collection
var charList: List[Char] = this //the function is inside a collection class, so **this** is the collection
while (!charList.isEmpty) {
accumulator = incrFunction(accumulator , collection.head)
charList = these.tail
}
accumulator
}
I hope this makes the concept of foldLeft clearer.
So it is essentially an abstraction over an imperative while loop, that accumulates some value by traversing the collection and updating the accumulator. The accumulator is updated using a user-provided function that takes the previous value of the accumulator and the current item of the collection.
Its very description hints that it is a great tool to compute all sorts of aggregates on a collection, like sum, max etc. Yeah, scala collections actually provide all these functions, but they serve as a good example use case.
On the specifics of your question, let me point out that this can be easily done using groupBy:
def times(l: List[Char]) = l.groupBy(c => c).mapValues(_.size).toList
times(List('a','b','a')) // outputs List[(Char, Int)] = List((b,1), (a,2))
.groupBy(c => c) gives you Map[Char,List[Char]] = Map(b -> List(b), a -> List(a, a))
Then we use .mapValues(_.size) to map the values of the map to the size of the grouped sub-collections: Map[Char,Int] = Map(b -> 1, a -> 2).
Finally, you convert the map to a list of key-value tuples with .toList to get the final result.
Lastly, if you don't care about the order of the output list as you said, then leaving the output as a Map[Char,Int] conveys better this decision (instead of converting it to a list).