Fixed point in Scala - scala

Is there a shortcut for the following code snippet?
while (true) {
val newClusters = this.iterate(instances, clusters)
if (newClusters == clusters) {
return clusters
}
clusters = newClusters
}
I would like to calculate the fixed point, i.e. execute a function such that its result is stable. Are you aware of any higher-order functions that would suit my purposes?

An adaptation from a fixpoint calculation example from Scala By Example by Martin Odersky (Chapter 'First-Class functions', Section 5.3),
val instances = ... // from question statement
def isApproxFeasible(x: Clusters, y: Clusters) = some_distance_x_y < threshold
def fixedPoint(f: Clusters => Clusters)(initApprox: Clusters) = {
def iterate(approx: Clusters): Clusters = {
val newClusters = f(approx)
if (isCloseEnough(approx, newClusters)) newClusters
else iterate(newClusters)
}
iterate(initApprox)
}
where function f: Clusters => Clusters delivers new candidate clusters, and initApprox corresponds to the first, initial guess on a fixpoint. Function isApproxFeasible helps ensuring termination for a priori threshold.

An alternative approach would be to combine the famous one-line Fibonacci numbers computation (https://stackoverflow.com/a/9864521/788207) and takeWhile:
val reductions = Stream.iterate(clusters)(this.iterate(instances, _))
(reductions, reductions.tail).zipped.takeWhile { case (p, n) => p != n }.last._1
Another approach, which would not require constructing a stream object in memory, is to use iterators:
Iterator.iterate(clusters)(this.iterate(instances, _))
.sliding(2)
.dropWhile { case prev +: next +: _ => prev != next }
.next()
.head
Although the imperative solution will likely be more efficient because it is a simple loop without stream construction or closures invocation.

Related

Functional Breadth First Search in Scala with the State Monad

I'm trying to implement a functional Breadth First Search in Scala to compute the distances between a given node and all the other nodes in an unweighted graph. I've used a State Monad for this with the signature as :-
case class State[S,A](run:S => (A,S))
Other functions such as map, flatMap, sequence, modify etc etc are similar to what you'd find inside a standard State Monad.
Here's the code :-
case class Node(label: Int)
case class BfsState(q: Queue[Node], nodesList: List[Node], discovered: Set[Node], distanceFromSrc: Map[Node, Int]) {
val isTerminated = q.isEmpty
}
case class Graph(adjList: Map[Node, List[Node]]) {
def bfs(src: Node): (List[Node], Map[Node, Int]) = {
val initialBfsState = BfsState(Queue(src), List(src), Set(src), Map(src -> 0))
val output = bfsComp(initialBfsState)
(output.nodesList,output.distanceFromSrc)
}
#tailrec
private def bfsComp(currState:BfsState): BfsState = {
if (currState.isTerminated) currState
else bfsComp(searchNode.run(currState)._2)
}
private def searchNode: State[BfsState, Unit] = for {
node <- State[BfsState, Node](s => {
val (n, newQ) = s.q.dequeue
(n, s.copy(q = newQ))
})
s <- get
_ <- sequence(adjList(node).filter(!s.discovered(_)).map(n => {
modify[BfsState](s => {
s.copy(s.q.enqueue(n), n :: s.nodesList, s.discovered + n, s.distanceFromSrc + (n -> (s.distanceFromSrc(node) + 1)))
})
}))
} yield ()
}
Please can you advice on :-
Should the State Transition on dequeue in the searchNode function be a member of BfsState itself?
How do I make this code more performant/concise/readable?
First off, I suggest moving all the private defs related to bfs into bfs itself. This is the convention for methods that are solely used to implement another.
Second, I suggest simply not using State for this matter. State (like most monads) is about composition. It is useful when you have many things that all need access to the same global state. In this case, BfsState is specialized to bfs, will likely never be used anywhere else (it might be a good idea to move the class into bfs too), and the State itself is always run, so the outer world never sees it. (In many cases, this is fine, but here the scope is too small for State to be useful.) It'd be much cleaner to pull the logic of searchNode into bfsComp itself.
Third, I don't understand why you need both nodesList and discovered, when you can just call _.toList on discovered once you've done your computation. I've left it in in my reimplementation, though, in case there's more to this code that you haven't displayed.
def bfsComp(old: BfsState): BfsState = {
if(old.q.isEmpty) old // You don't need isTerminated, I think
else {
val (currNode, newQ) = old.q.dequeue
val newState = old.copy(q = newQ)
adjList(curNode)
.filterNot(s.discovered) // Set[T] <: T => Boolean and filterNot means you don't need to write !s.discovered(_)
.foldLeft(newState) { case (BfsState(q, nodes, discovered, distance), adjNode) =>
BfsState(
q.enqueue(adjNode),
adjNode :: nodes,
discovered + adjNode,
distance + (adjNode -> (distance(currNode) + 1)
)
}
}
}
def bfs(src: Node): (List[Node], Map[Node, Int]) = {
// I suggest moving BfsState and bfsComp into this method
val output = bfsComp(BfsState(Queue(src), List(src), Set(src), Map(src -> 0)))
(output.nodesList, output.distanceFromSrc)
// Could get rid of nodesList and say output.discovered.toList
}
In the event that you think you do have a good reason for using State here, here are my thoughts.
You use def searchNode. The point of a State is that it is pure and immutable, so it should be a val, or else you reconstruct the same State every use.
You write:
node <- State[BfsState, Node](s => {
val (n, newQ) = s.q.dequeue
(n, s.copy(q = newQ))
})
First off, Scala's syntax was designed so that you don't need to have both a () and {} surrounding an anonymous function:
node <- State[BfsState, Node] { s =>
// ...
}
Second, this doesn't look quite right to me. One benefit of using for-syntax is that the anonymous functions are hidden from you and there is minimal indentation. I'd just write it out
oldState <- get
(node, newQ) = oldState.q.dequeue
newState = oldState.copy(q = newQ)
Footnote: would it make sense to make Node an inner class of Graph? Just a suggestion.

Scala - access array from parallel for in a threadsafe manner

I have the following piece of code:
//variable arrayToAccess is an array of integers
//anotherArray holds integers also
anotherArray.par.foreach{ item =>
val mathValue = mathematicalCalculation(item)
if (mathValue > arrayToAccess.last) {
//append element
arrayToAccess :+= mathValue
//sort array and store it in the same variable
arrayToAccess = arrayToAccess.sortWith((i1,i2) => i1 > i2).take(5)
}
}
I think that accessing the arrayToAccess variable in that way is not threadsafe. How can I implement the above code in a threadsafe manner? Also, can I control the level of parallelism of anotherArray.par (for instance, only use 2 cores out of 8 available) ? If not, is there a way to control it?
You are overthinking it.
Just do:
arrayToAccess = anotherArray.par
.map { mathematicalCalculation _ }
.seq
.sorted
.reverse
.take(5)
It yields the same result as your code is intended to, but is thread safe.
Update if you are worried about the time sort step would take, you could just select top five in linear time instead:
val top(data: Array[Int], n: Int) = {
val queue = PriorityQueue()(Ordering[Int].reverse)
data.fold(queue) { case(q,n) =>
q.enqueue(n)
while(q.size > 5) q.dequeue
queue
}
.toArray
.sorted
.reversed
Regarding configuring the parallelism, I think, this should help: http://docs.scala-lang.org/overviews/parallel-collections/configuration
Update if you are concerned about the sorting step, you could replace it with a parallel sort or fold into a bounded priority queue in linear time, like this:
def topN(data: Array[Int], n: Int) = {
val queue = PriorityQueue()(Ordering[Int].reverse)
data.foldLeft(queue) { case (q, x) =>
q.enqueue(x)
while(q.size > n) q.dequeue
q
}.dequeueAll.reverse

Distributing a loop to different machines of a cluster in Spark

Here is a for loop that I'm running in my code:
for(x<-0 to vertexArray.length-1)
{
for(y<-0 to vertexArray.length-1)
{
breakable {
if (x.equals(y)) {
break
}
else {
var d1 = vertexArray(x)._2._2
var d2 = vertexArray(y)._2._2
val ps = new Period(d1, d2)
if (ps.getMonths() == 0 && ps.getYears() == 0 && Math.abs(ps.toStandardHours().getHours()) <= 5) {
edgeArray += Edge(vertexArray(x)._1, vertexArray(y)._1, Math.abs(ps.toStandardHours().getHours()))
}
}
}
}
}
I want to speed up the running time of this code by distributing it across multiple machines in a cluster. I'm using Scala on intelliJ-idea with Spark. How would I implement this type of code to work on multiple machines?
As already stated by Mariano Kamp Spark is probably not a good choice here and there are much better options out there. To add on top of that any approach which has to work on a relatively large data and requires O(N^2) time is simply unacceptable. So the first thing you should do is to focus on choosing suitable algorithm not a platform.
Still it is possible to translate it to Spark. A naive approach which directly reflects your code would be to use Cartesian product:
def check(v1: T, v2: T): Option[U] = {
if (v1 == v2) {
None
} else {
// rest of your logic, Some[U] if all tests passed
// None otherwise
???
}
}
val vertexRDD = sc.parallelize(vertexArray)
.map{case (v1, v2) => check(v1, 2)}
.filter(_.isDefined)
.map(_.get)
If vertexArray is small you could use flatMap with broadcast variable
val vertexBd = sc.broadcast(vertexArray)
vertexRDD.flatMap(v1 =>
vertexBd.map(v2 => check(v1, v2)).filter(_.isDefined).map(_.get))
)
Another improvement is to perform proper join. The obvious condition is year and month:
def toPair(v: T): ((Int, Int), T) = ??? // Return ((year, month), vertex)
val vertexPairs = vertexRDD.map(toPair)
vertexPairs.join(vertexPairs)
.map{case ((_, _), (v1, v2)) => check(v1, v2) // Check should be simplified
.filter(_.isDefined)
.map(_.get)
Of course this can be achieved with a broadcast variable as well. You simply have to group vertexArray by (year, month) pair and broadcast Map[(Int, Int), T].
From here you can improve further by avoiding naive checks by partition and traversing data sorted by timestamp:
def sortPartitionByDatetime(iter: Iterator[U]): Iterator[U] = ???
def yieldMatching(iter: Iterator[U]): Iterator[V] = {
// flatmap keeping track of values in open window
???
}
vertexPairs
.partitionBy(new HashPartitioner(n))
.mapPartitions(sortPartitionByDatetime)
.mapPartitions(yieldMatching)
or using a DataFrame with window function and range clause.
Note:
All types are simply placeholders. In the future please try to provide type information. Right now all I can tell is there are some tuples and dates involved
Welcome to Stack Overflow. Unfortunately this is not the right approach ;(
Spark is not a tool to parallelize tasks, but to parallelize data.
So you need to think how you can distribute/parallelize/partition your data, then compute the individual partitions, then consolidate the results as a last step.
Also you need to read up on Spark in general. A simple answer here cannot get you started. This is just the wrong format.
Start here: http://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/programming-guide.html

Accumulate result until some condition is met in functional way

I have some expensive computation in a loop, and I need to find max value produced by the calculations, though if, say, it will equal to LIMIT I'd like to stop the calculation and return my accumulator.
It may easily be done by recursion:
val list: List[Int] = ???
val UpperBound = ???
def findMax(ls: List[Int], max: Int): Int = ls match {
case h :: rest =>
val v = expensiveComputation(h)
if (v == UpperBound) v
else findMax(rest, math.max(max, v))
case _ => max
}
findMax(list, 0)
My question: whether this behaviour template has a name and reflected in scala collection library?
Update: Do something up to N times or until condition is met in Scala - There is an interesting idea (using laziness and find or exists at the end) but it is not directly applicable to my particular case or requires mutable var to track accumulator.
I think your recursive function is quite nice, so honestly I wouldn't change that, but here's a way to use the collections library:
list.foldLeft(0) {
case (max, next) =>
if(max == UpperBound)
max
else
math.max(expensiveComputation(next), max)
}
It will iterate over the whole list, but after it has hit the upper bound it won't perform the expensive computation.
Update
Based on your comment I tried adapting foldLeft a bit, based on LinearSeqOptimized's foldLeft implementation.
def foldLeftWithExit[A, B](list: Seq[A])(z: B)(exit: B => Boolean)(f: (B, A) => B): B = {
var acc = z
var remaining = list
while (!remaining.isEmpty && !exit(acc)) {
acc = f(acc, list.head)
remaining = remaining.tail
}
acc
}
Calling it:
foldLeftWithExit(list)(0)(UpperBound==){
case (max, next) => math.max(expensiveComputation(next), max)
}
You could potentially use implicits to omit the first parameter of list.
Hope this helps.

Abort early in a fold

What's the best way to terminate a fold early? As a simplified example, imagine I want to sum up the numbers in an Iterable, but if I encounter something I'm not expecting (say an odd number) I might want to terminate. This is a first approximation
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]): Option[Int] = {
nums.foldLeft (Some(0): Option[Int]) {
case (Some(s), n) if n % 2 == 0 => Some(s + n)
case _ => None
}
}
However, this solution is pretty ugly (as in, if I did a .foreach and a return -- it'd be much cleaner and clearer) and worst of all, it traverses the entire iterable even if it encounters a non-even number.
So what would be the best way to write a fold like this, that terminates early? Should I just go and write this recursively, or is there a more accepted way?
My first choice would usually be to use recursion. It is only moderately less compact, is potentially faster (certainly no slower), and in early termination can make the logic more clear. In this case you need nested defs which is a little awkward:
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]) = {
def sumEven(it: Iterator[Int], n: Int): Option[Int] = {
if (it.hasNext) {
val x = it.next
if ((x % 2) == 0) sumEven(it, n+x) else None
}
else Some(n)
}
sumEven(nums.iterator, 0)
}
My second choice would be to use return, as it keeps everything else intact and you only need to wrap the fold in a def so you have something to return from--in this case, you already have a method, so:
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]): Option[Int] = {
Some(nums.foldLeft(0){ (n,x) =>
if ((n % 2) != 0) return None
n+x
})
}
which in this particular case is a lot more compact than recursion (though we got especially unlucky with recursion since we had to do an iterable/iterator transformation). The jumpy control flow is something to avoid when all else is equal, but here it's not. No harm in using it in cases where it's valuable.
If I was doing this often and wanted it within the middle of a method somewhere (so I couldn't just use return), I would probably use exception-handling to generate non-local control flow. That is, after all, what it is good at, and error handling is not the only time it's useful. The only trick is to avoid generating a stack trace (which is really slow), and that's easy because the trait NoStackTrace and its child trait ControlThrowable already do that for you. Scala already uses this internally (in fact, that's how it implements the return from inside the fold!). Let's make our own (can't be nested, though one could fix that):
import scala.util.control.ControlThrowable
case class Returned[A](value: A) extends ControlThrowable {}
def shortcut[A](a: => A) = try { a } catch { case Returned(v) => v }
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]) = shortcut{
Option(nums.foldLeft(0){ (n,x) =>
if ((x % 2) != 0) throw Returned(None)
n+x
})
}
Here of course using return is better, but note that you could put shortcut anywhere, not just wrapping an entire method.
Next in line for me would be to re-implement fold (either myself or to find a library that does it) so that it could signal early termination. The two natural ways of doing this are to not propagate the value but an Option containing the value, where None signifies termination; or to use a second indicator function that signals completion. The Scalaz lazy fold shown by Kim Stebel already covers the first case, so I'll show the second (with a mutable implementation):
def foldOrFail[A,B](it: Iterable[A])(zero: B)(fail: A => Boolean)(f: (B,A) => B): Option[B] = {
val ii = it.iterator
var b = zero
while (ii.hasNext) {
val x = ii.next
if (fail(x)) return None
b = f(b,x)
}
Some(b)
}
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]) = foldOrFail(nums)(0)(_ % 2 != 0)(_ + _)
(Whether you implement the termination by recursion, return, laziness, etc. is up to you.)
I think that covers the main reasonable variants; there are some other options also, but I'm not sure why one would use them in this case. (Iterator itself would work well if it had a findOrPrevious, but it doesn't, and the extra work it takes to do that by hand makes it a silly option to use here.)
The scenario you describe (exit upon some unwanted condition) seems like a good use case for the takeWhile method. It is essentially filter, but should end upon encountering an element that doesn't meet the condition.
For example:
val list = List(2,4,6,8,6,4,2,5,3,2)
list.takeWhile(_ % 2 == 0) //result is List(2,4,6,8,6,4,2)
This will work just fine for Iterators/Iterables too. The solution I suggest for your "sum of even numbers, but break on odd" is:
list.iterator.takeWhile(_ % 2 == 0).foldLeft(...)
And just to prove that it's not wasting your time once it hits an odd number...
scala> val list = List(2,4,5,6,8)
list: List[Int] = List(2, 4, 5, 6, 8)
scala> def condition(i: Int) = {
| println("processing " + i)
| i % 2 == 0
| }
condition: (i: Int)Boolean
scala> list.iterator.takeWhile(condition _).sum
processing 2
processing 4
processing 5
res4: Int = 6
You can do what you want in a functional style using the lazy version of foldRight in scalaz. For a more in depth explanation, see this blog post. While this solution uses a Stream, you can convert an Iterable into a Stream efficiently with iterable.toStream.
import scalaz._
import Scalaz._
val str = Stream(2,1,2,2,2,2,2,2,2)
var i = 0 //only here for testing
val r = str.foldr(Some(0):Option[Int])((n,s) => {
println(i)
i+=1
if (n % 2 == 0) s.map(n+) else None
})
This only prints
0
1
which clearly shows that the anonymous function is only called twice (i.e. until it encounters the odd number). That is due to the definition of foldr, whose signature (in case of Stream) is def foldr[B](b: B)(f: (Int, => B) => B)(implicit r: scalaz.Foldable[Stream]): B. Note that the anonymous function takes a by name parameter as its second argument, so it need no be evaluated.
Btw, you can still write this with the OP's pattern matching solution, but I find if/else and map more elegant.
Well, Scala does allow non local returns. There are differing opinions on whether or not this is a good style.
scala> def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]): Option[Int] = {
| nums.foldLeft (Some(0): Option[Int]) {
| case (None, _) => return None
| case (Some(s), n) if n % 2 == 0 => Some(s + n)
| case (Some(_), _) => None
| }
| }
sumEvenNumbers: (nums: Iterable[Int])Option[Int]
scala> sumEvenNumbers(2 to 10)
res8: Option[Int] = None
scala> sumEvenNumbers(2 to 10 by 2)
res9: Option[Int] = Some(30)
EDIT:
In this particular case, as #Arjan suggested, you can also do:
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Iterable[Int]): Option[Int] = {
nums.foldLeft (Some(0): Option[Int]) {
case (Some(s), n) if n % 2 == 0 => Some(s + n)
case _ => return None
}
}
You can use foldM from cats lib (as suggested by #Didac) but I suggest to use Either instead of Option if you want to get actual sum out.
bifoldMap is used to extract the result from Either.
import cats.implicits._
def sumEven(nums: Stream[Int]): Either[Int, Int] = {
nums.foldM(0) {
case (acc, n) if n % 2 == 0 => Either.right(acc + n)
case (acc, n) => {
println(s"Stopping on number: $n")
Either.left(acc)
}
}
}
examples:
println("Result: " + sumEven(Stream(2, 2, 3, 11)).bifoldMap(identity, identity))
> Stopping on number: 3
> Result: 4
println("Result: " + sumEven(Stream(2, 7, 2, 3)).bifoldMap(identity, identity))
> Stopping on number: 7
> Result: 2
Cats has a method called foldM which does short-circuiting (for Vector, List, Stream, ...).
It works as follows:
def sumEvenNumbers(nums: Stream[Int]): Option[Long] = {
import cats.implicits._
nums.foldM(0L) {
case (acc, c) if c % 2 == 0 => Some(acc + c)
case _ => None
}
}
If it finds a not even element it returns None without computing the rest, otherwise it returns the sum of the even entries.
If you want to keep count until an even entry is found, you should use an Either[Long, Long]
#Rex Kerr your answer helped me, but I needed to tweak it to use Either
def foldOrFail[A,B,C,D](map: B => Either[D, C])(merge: (A, C) => A)(initial: A)(it: Iterable[B]): Either[D, A] = {
val ii= it.iterator
var b= initial
while (ii.hasNext) {
val x= ii.next
map(x) match {
case Left(error) => return Left(error)
case Right(d) => b= merge(b, d)
}
}
Right(b)
}
You could try using a temporary var and using takeWhile. Here is a version.
var continue = true
// sample stream of 2's and then a stream of 3's.
val evenSum = (Stream.fill(10)(2) ++ Stream.fill(10)(3)).takeWhile(_ => continue)
.foldLeft(Option[Int](0)){
case (result,i) if i%2 != 0 =>
continue = false;
// return whatever is appropriate either the accumulated sum or None.
result
case (optionSum,i) => optionSum.map( _ + i)
}
The evenSum should be Some(20) in this case.
You can throw a well-chosen exception upon encountering your termination criterion, handling it in the calling code.
A more beutiful solution would be using span:
val (l, r) = numbers.span(_ % 2 == 0)
if(r.isEmpty) Some(l.sum)
else None
... but it traverses the list two times if all the numbers are even
Just for an "academic" reasons (:
var headers = Source.fromFile(file).getLines().next().split(",")
var closeHeaderIdx = headers.takeWhile { s => !"Close".equals(s) }.foldLeft(0)((i, S) => i+1)
Takes twice then it should but it is a nice one liner.
If "Close" not found it will return
headers.size
Another (better) is this one:
var headers = Source.fromFile(file).getLines().next().split(",").toList
var closeHeaderIdx = headers.indexOf("Close")