Scala: Try till first success on a list - scala

What is the idiomatic way of applying a function A => Try[B] on a List[A] and return either the first succesful result Some[B] (it short-circuits) or if everything fails, returns None
I want to do something like this:
val inputs: List[String] = _
def foo[A, B](input: A): Try[B] = _
def main = {
for {
input <- inputs
} foo(input) match {
case Failure(_) => // continue
case Success(x) => return Some(x) //return the first success
}
return None // everything failed
}

You can do the same thing using collectFirst in one less step:
inputs.iterator.map(foo).collectFirst { case Success(x) => x }

You want this:
inputs
.iterator // or view (anything lazy works)
.map(foo)
.find(_.isSuccess)
.map(_.get)
It returns an Option[B].

Here's the same thing but it will return the last Failure in the list if none are successful. Theoretically tries.find(_.isSuccess).getOrElse(tries.last) would work, but on a list view (lazy list) that causes all the attempts to be evaluated twice. Instead, this works for lazy lists (throws on empty collection):
val tries = inputs.view.map(foo)
val firstSuccessOrLastFailure = tries.zipWithIndex.collectFirst({
case (s # Success(_), _) => s
case (f, i) if (i == tries.size - 1) => f
}).get

Related

Scala tail recursion from finally block

I want to apply a function f to each element of a List and not stop at the first error but throw the last error (if any) only:
#annotation.tailrec
def tryAll[A](xs: List[A])(f: A => Unit): Unit = {
xs match {
case x :: xt =>
try {
f(x)
} finally {
tryAll(xt)(f)
}
case _ =>
}
}
But, the above code does not compile - it is complaining that this function is not tail recursive. Why not?
This solution iterates over all elements and produces (throws) the last error if any:
def tryAll[A](xs: List[A])(f: A => Unit): Unit = {
val res = xs.foldLeft(Option.empty[Throwable]) {
case (maybeThrowable, a) =>
Try(f(a)) match {
case Success(_) => maybeThrowable
case Failure(e) => Option(e)
}
}
res.foreach(throwable => throw throwable)
}
As mentioned by #HristoIliev, your method cannot be tail recursive because the finally call is not guaranteed to be the tail call. This means that any method using try in this way will not be tail recursive. See this answer, also.
Calling the method again is a weird way of trying something repeatedly until it succeeds, because at each stage it's throwing an exception you are presumably not handling. Instead, I'd argue using a functional approach with Try, taking failures from a view until the operation succeeds. The only disadvantage to this approach is that it doesn't throw any exceptions for you to handle along the way (which can also be an advantage!).
def tryAll[A](xs: List[A])(f: A => Unit): Unit =
xs.view.map(x => Try(f(x))).takeWhile(_.isFailure).force
scala> val list = List(0, 0, 0, 4, 5, 0)
scala> tryAll(list)(a => println(10 / a))
2
If you really want to handle the exceptions (or just the last exception), you can change the return type of tryAll to List[Try[Unit]] (or simply Try[Unit] if you modify the code to only take the last one). It's better for the return type of the method to describe part of what it's actually doing--potentially returning errors.
Not sure the intention of the method, but you can something like that:
final def tryAll[A](xs: List[A])(f: A => Unit): Unit = {
xs match {
case x :: xt =>
try {
f(x)
} catch {
case e => tryAll(xt)(f)
}
case _ => //do something else
}
}
I know this way to use #annotation.tailrec
From this:
def fac(n:Int):Int = if (n<=1) 1 else n*fac(n-1)
You should have this:
#scala.annotation.tailrec
def facIter(f:Int, n:Int):Int = if (n<2) f else facIter(n*f, n-1)
def fac(n:Int) = facIter(1,n)

Sorting function in Scala runs for a long time

I am trying to write a recursive function in SCALA that take sin a list and sorts it.
However, the code seems to run for a long time. It doesn't even give me an error message.
def sort(list:List[Int]):List[Int] = list match{
case Nil => Nil
case h::t => insert (h, sort(t))
def insert(num:Int, list:List[Int]): List[Int]=list match{
case Nil => List()
case head::tail=>
if(head>=num)
num::list
else
head::insert(num,tail)
}
sort(list)
}
You had 2 problems:
1) you are calling sort recursively from sort function directly - remove sort(list) because insert already calls it. This will make it terminate.
2) you return an empty list in one of the cases instead of constructing a list with 1 elem - base case is wrong.
This version works:
def sort(list: List[Int]): List[Int] = {
def insert(num: Int, list: List[Int]): List[Int] = list match {
case Nil => num :: Nil
case head::tail =>
if(head >= num)
num::list
else
head::insert(num, tail)
}
list match {
case Nil => Nil
case h::t => insert(h, sort(t))
}
}

Scala - grouping on an ordered iterator lazily

I have an Iterator[Record] which is ordered on record.id this way:
record.id=1
record.id=1
...
record.id=1
record.id=2
record.id=2
..
record.id=2
Records of a specific ID could occur a large number of times, so I want to write a function that takes this iterator as input, and returns an Iterator[Iterator[Record]] output in a lazy manner.
I was able to come up with the following, but it fails on StackOverflowError after 500K records or so:
def groupByIter[T, B](iterO: Iterator[T])(func: T => B): Iterator[Iterator[T]] = new Iterator[Iterator[T]] {
var iter = iterO
def hasNext = iter.hasNext
def next() = {
val first = iter.next()
val firstValue = func(first)
val (i1, i2) = iter.span(el => func(el) == firstValue)
iter = i2
Iterator(first) ++ i1
}
}
What am I doing wrong?
Trouble here is that each Iterator.span call makes another stacked closure for trailing iterator, and without any trampolining it's very easy to overflow.
Actually I dont think there is an implementation, which is not memoizing elements of prefix iterator, since followed iterator could be accessed earlier than prefix is drain out.
Even in .span implementation there is a Queue to memoize elements in the Leading definition.
So easiest implementation that I could imagine is the following via Stream.
implicit class StreamChopOps[T](xs: Stream[T]) {
def chopBy[U](f: T => U): Stream[Stream[T]] = xs match {
case x #:: _ =>
def eq(e: T) = f(e) == f(x)
xs.takeWhile(eq) #:: xs.dropWhile(eq).chopBy(f)
case _ => Stream.empty
}
}
Although it could be not the most performant as it memoize a lot. But with proper iterating of that, GC should handle problem of excess intermediate streams.
You could use it as myIterator.toStream.chopBy(f)
Simple check validates that following code can run without SO
Iterator.fill(10000000)(Iterator(1,1,2)).flatten //1,1,2,1,1,2,...
.toStream.chopBy(identity) //(1,1),(2),(1,1),(2),...
.map(xs => xs.sum * xs.size).sum //60000000
Inspired by chopBy implemented by #Odomontois here is a chopBy I implemented for Iterator. Of course each bulk should fit allocated memory. It doesn't looks very elegant but it seems to work :)
implicit class IteratorChopOps[A](toChopIter: Iterator[A]) {
def chopBy[U](f: A => U) = new Iterator[Traversable[A]] {
var next_el: Option[A] = None
#tailrec
private def accum(acc: List[A]): List[A] = {
next_el = None
val new_acc = hasNext match {
case true =>
val next = toChopIter.next()
acc match {
case Nil =>
acc :+ next
case _ MatchTail t if (f(t) == f(next)) =>
acc :+ next
case _ =>
next_el = Some(next)
acc
}
case false =>
next_el = None
return acc
}
next_el match{
case Some(_) =>
new_acc
case None => accum(new_acc)
}
}
def hasNext = {
toChopIter.hasNext || next_el.isDefined
}
def next: Traversable[A] = accum(next_el.toList)
}
}
And here is an extractor for matching tail:
object MatchTail {
def unapply[A] (l: Traversable[A]) = Some( (l.init, l.last) )
}

How to best implement "first success" in Scala (i.e., return the first success from a sequence of failure-prone operations)

Per the title, there are a couple of reasonable and idiomatic ways that I know of to return the first successful computation, though I'm most interested here in how to handle the case when we want to know the specific failure of the last attempt when all attempts fail. As a first attempt, we can use collectFirst and do something like the following:
def main(args: Array[String]) {
val xs = (1 to 5)
def check(i: Int): Try[Int] = {
println(s"checking: $i")
Try(if (i < 3) throw new RuntimeException(s"small: $i") else i)
}
val z = xs.collectFirst { i => check(i) match { case s # Success(x) => s } }
println(s"final val: $z")
}
This seems like a reasonable solution if we don't care about the failures (actually, since we're always returning a success, we never return a Failure, only a None in the case there is no successful computation).
On the other hand, to handle the case when all attempts fail, we can capture the last failure by using the following:
def main2(args: Array[String]) {
val xs = (1 to 5)
def check(i: Int): Try[Int] = {
println(s"checking: $i")
Try(if (i < 3) throw new RuntimeException(s"small: $i") else i)
}
val empty: Try[Int] = Failure(new RuntimeException("empty"))
val z = xs.foldLeft(empty)((e, i) => e.recoverWith { case _ => check(i) })
println(s"final val: $z")
}
The disadvantages here are that you create a "fake" Throwable representing empty, and if the list is very long, we iterate over the whole list, even though we may have succeeded very early on, even if later iterations are essentially no-ops.
Is there a better way to implement main2 that is idiomatic and doesn't suffer from the aforementioned disadvantages?
You could do something like this:
#tailrec
def collectFirstOrFailure[T](l: List[T], f: T => Try[T]): Try[T] = {
l match {
case h :: Nil => f(h)
case h :: t => // f(h) orElse collectFirstOrFailure(t, f) //wish I could do this but not tailrec approved!
val res = f(h)
if (res.isFailure){
collectFirstOrFailure(t, f)
}
else {
res
}
case Nil => Failure(new RuntimeException("empty"))
}
}
val y = collectFirstOrFailure(xs.toList, check)
println(s"final val: $y")
This isn't very pretty, and we do still have to handle the empty list case, but we're not creating a new Failure(new RuntimeException("empty")) with every run (unless it's an empty list) and we stop short if there's a success. I feel like scalaz has some better way to do this but I can't figure it out right now. The returning the last failure requirement is making this a bit complex.
UPDATE
There's always iterator...
def collectFirstOrFailureI[T](i: Iterator[T], f: T => Try[T]): Try[T] = {
while (i.hasNext){
val res = f(i.next())
if (res.isSuccess || !i.hasNext){
return res
}
}
Failure(new RuntimeException("empty"))
}
xs.toIterator
val x = collectFirstOrFailureI(xs.iterator, check)
println(s"final val: $x")
There's a previous answer:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/20665337/1296806
with the caveat that your question asks for the last failure, if all have failed.
I guess that's why this isn't a duplicate?
That's trivial to add to the code from that answer:
def bad(f: Failure) = if (count.decrementAndGet == 0) { p tryComplete new Failure(new RuntimeException("All bad", f.exception)) }
or more simply
p tryComplete f

Applying or operation to Option results

I have the following code:
class CSplit(var s1: CanvNode, var s2: CanvNode) extends SplitPane
{
topComponent = s1.merge
bottomComponent = s2.merge
def containsV(orig: MapCanvT): Option[MapCanvT] =
{
def containsIn(cn: CanvNode): Option[MapCanvT] = cn match
{
case Left => None
case Right(mc) => if (mc == orig) Some(mc) else None
}
containsIn(s1) match
{
case Some(mc) => Some(mc)
case None => containsIn(s2)
}
}
}
I want to reduce the code of the containsV method. My first thought was to use a fold method to shorten the containsIn method. But Option doesn't have one, nor does it extend Class Either. Shouldn't Option[T] extend Either[T, None] ? Then at least one could use Either's fold method.
My final thought was to treat s1 and s2 as a List and do find over it but I can't get this to compile:
def containsV(orig: MapCanvT):
Option[MapCanvT] = ::[CanvNode](s1, s2).find(_ == Right(orig))
Scala 2.10 adds fold to Option. In the meantime you can use map(f).getOrElse(g) instead:
// These produce identical results
o.fold(g)(x => f(x))
o.map(x => f(x)).getOrElse(g)
Edit: so, for example, the following three do the same thing:
val os: List[Option[Int]] = List(Some(5),None)
// Explicit match
os.map{ _ match {
case Some(x) => x+3
case None => 0
}}
// map+getOrElse
os.map{ _.map(_+3).getOrElse(0) }
// fold
os.map{ _.fold(0)(_+3) }
In the fold case, you give the default value for the None case first, and then the function that handles the case where there is a value. In each case you should get List(8,0).
It can be implemented with a list by using the collectFirst method
def containsV(orig: MapCanvT): Option[MapCanvT]
= List(s1, s2).collectFirst {case i: MapCanvT if (i == (orig) => i}
Let's start with the easy part:
containsIn(s1) match
{
case Some(mc) => Some(mc)
case None => containsIn(s2)
}
is the same as
containsIn(s1) orElse containsIn(s2)
Now we only have to deal with containsIn:
def containsIn(cn: CanvNode): Option[MapCanvT] = cn match
{
case Left => None
case Right(mc) => if (mc == orig) Some(mc) else None
}
We can use fold on Either, which gets rid of most of the pattern matching:
cn.fold(_ => None, Some(_))
But there's the orig thingy. We can handle it with a filter, though:
cn.fold(_ => None, Some(_)) filter (orig.==)
Thus:
def containsV(orig: MapCanvT): Option[MapCanvT] = {
def containsIn(cn: CanvNode): Option[MapCanvT] =
cn.fold(_ => None, Some(_)) filter (orig.==)
containsIn(s1) orElse containsIn(s2)
}
I think orElse is much overlooked.