re-use a guard in Scala - scala

I often find myself wanting to reuse the result of a guard evaluation in scala, e.g.
blah match {
case Blah(a, b) if expensive(a) < 10 =>
expensive(a)
case _ => b
}
Is this possible using some lesser-known incantation? (putting an # on the expensive doesn't work)
Will this be possible anytime soon?

You can do something similar using a custom extractor. This should work:
case class Blah(a: Int, b: Int)
object expensive {
def unapply(x: Int): Option[Double] = Some(math.cos(x))
}
Blah(1, 1) match {
case Blah(a # expensive(e), b) if e < 10 => println(a, b, e)
case _ => println("nothing")
}
Be sure that the expensive is really more expensive that creating an Option object, which is what the above does.

Related

How to negate types in pattern match in Scala?

With this code println will be executed only for specified exception. I'm wondering if it's possible to negate that line to make it executed for all other exceptions that are not specified. I know it's possible using 2 cases, but I want to know if it can be done with one case.
val myHandler: PartialFunction[Throwable, Unit] = {
case e # (_: MappingException | _: ParseException | _: SomeOtherException) =>
println("Got it")
}
AFAIk you can not do this with a single match, but you can create your own custom Extractor in case you need to replicate this behaviour in multiple places.
import scala.reflect.ClassTag
final class Not[A : ClassTag] {
def unapply(any: Any): Boolean = any match {
case _: A => false
case _ => true
}
}
object Not {
def apply[A : ClassTag]: Not[A] = new Not
}
which you can use like this:
final val NotAnInt = Not[Int]
10 match {
case NotAnInt() => false
case _ => true
}
// res: Boolean = true
"10" match {
case NotAnInt() => true
case _ => false
}
// res: Boolean = true
However, keep in mind this will have all the limitation of any type check, like not being able to differentiate between a List[Int] from a List[String] due erasure; and being considered a bad practice.
I would suggest looking into a typeclass approach, for example, I believe Shapeless provides a negation one.
You can see the code running here.
Well you've already identified what is probably the more readable way to do it.
val myHandler: PartialFunction[Throwable, Unit] = {
case e # (_: MappingException | _: ParseException | _: SomeOtherException) =>
throw e
case _ =>
println("Got it")
}
This is probably how I'd write this in actual production code. It's sensible and it's clear at a glance.
But you asked for one case, so let's give that a go. Since we want to check against several types, we'll need to be able to represent them as a list. There are countless Scala libraries that make this prettier, but for our purposes we'll just roll our own.
trait TList {
def isMember(x: Any): Boolean
}
object Nil extends TList {
def isMember(x: Any) = false
}
case class Cons[H : ClassTag](val tail: TList) extends TList {
def isMember(x: Any) = {
x match {
case _: H => true
case _ => tail.isMember(x)
}
}
}
So we can represent classical Lisp-style singly-linked lists and check whether an arbitrary Any value has a type anywhere in the list. Now let's negate it and write an unapply method.
case class NotMember(val types: TList) {
def unapply(elem: Any): Boolean =
!types.isMember(elem)
}
Then our handler looks like
val test = NotMember(
Cons[MappingException](Cons[ParseException](Cons[SomeOtherException](Nil)))
)
val myHandler: PartialFunction[Throwable, Unit] = {
case test() =>
println("Got it")
}
Again, if you really want to go down this road, you'll want to grab a library to make the type-level stuff manageable. But it's definitely possible. The only question is whether it's worth it for your use case.

How to return early without return statement?

How to write an early-return piece of code in scala with no returns/breaks?
For example
for i in 0..10000000
if expensive_operation(i)
return i
return -1
How about
input.find(expensiveOperation).getOrElse(-1)
You can use dropWhile
Here an example:
Seq(2,6,8,3,5).dropWhile(_ % 2 == 0).headOption.getOrElse(default = -1) // -> 8
And here you find more scala-takewhile-example
With your example
(0 to 10000000).dropWhile(!expensive_operation(_)).headOption.getOrElse(default = -1)`
Since you asked for intuition to solve this problem generically. Let me start from the basis.
Scala is (between other things) a functional programming language, as such there is a very important concept for us. And it is that we write programs by composing expressions rather than statements.
Thus, the concept of return value for us means the evaluation of an expression.
(Note this is related to the concept of referential transparency).
val a = expr // a is bounded to the evaluation of expr,
val b = (a, a) // and they are interchangeable, thus b === (expr, expr)
How this relates to your question. In the sense that we really do not have control structures but complex expressions. For example an if
val a = if (expr) exprA else exprB // if itself is an expression, that returns other expressions.
Thus instead of doing something like this:
def foo(a: Int): Int =
if (a != 0) {
val b = a * a
return b
}
return -1
We would do something like:
def foo(a: Int): Int =
if (a != 0)
a * a
else
-1
Because we can bound all the if expression itself as the body of foo.
Now, returning to your specific question. How can we early return a cycle?
The answer is, you can't, at least not without mutations. But, you can use a higher concept, instead of iterating, you can traverse something. And you can do that using recursion.
Thus, let's implement ourselves the find proposed by #Thilo, as a tail-recursive function.
(It is very important that the function is recursive by tail, so the compiler optimizes it as something equivalent to a while loop, that way we will not blow up the stack).
def find(start: Int, end: Int, step: Int = 1)(predicate: Int => Boolean): Option[Int] = {
#annotation.tailrec
def loop(current: Int): Option[Int] =
if (current == end)
None // Base case.
else if (predicate(current))
Some(current) // Early return.
else
loop(current + step) // Recursive step.
loop(current = start)
}
find(0, 10000)(_ == 10)
// res: Option[Int] = Some(10)
Or we may generalize this a little bit more, let's implement find for Lists of any kind of elements.
def find[T](list: List[T])(predicate: T => Boolean): Option[T] = {
#annotation.tailrec
def loop(remaining: List[T]): Option[T] =
remaining match {
case Nil => None
case t :: _ if (predicate(t)) => Some(t)
case _ :: tail => loop(remaining = tail)
}
loop(remaining = list)
}
This is not necessarily the best solution from a practical perspective but I still wanted to add it for educational purposes:
import scala.annotation.tailrec
def expensiveOperation(i: Int): Boolean = ???
#tailrec
def findFirstBy[T](f: (T) => Boolean)(xs: Seq[T]): Option[T] = {
xs match {
case Seq() => None
case Seq(head, _*) if f(head) => Some(head)
case Seq(_, tail#_*) => findFirstBy(f)(tail)
}
}
val result = findFirstBy(expensiveOperation)(Range(0, 10000000)).getOrElse(-1)
Please prefer collections methods (dropWhile, find, ...) in your production code.
There a lot of better answer here but I think a 'while' could work just fine in that situation.
So, this code
for i in 0..10000000
if expensive_operation(i)
return i
return -1
could be rewritten as
var i = 0
var result = false
while(!result && i<(10000000-1)) {
i = i+1
result = expensive_operation(i)
}
After the 'while' the variable 'result' will tell if it succeed or not.

Scala : Pattern matching with Option[Foo] and parameter of Foo

How can rewrite the following to make it more 'Scala way' or use just one match?
case class Foo(bar: Any)
val fooOpt = Some(Foo("bar as String"))
def isValid(p: Any) = p match {
case _ # (_: String | _: Int) => true
case _ => false
}
//Is it possible to check for the type of bar directly in this if statement?
fooOpt match {
case Some(f) if isValid(f.bar) => doSomething
case _ => doSomethingElse
}
One alternative would be using the isInstanceOf.
fooOpt match {
case Some(f) if f.bar.isInstanceOf[String] => doSomething
case Some(f) if f.bar.isInstanceOf[Int] => doSomething //could also rewrite to use just one case
case _ => doSomethingElse
}
Is there other way?
This can all be done in one big pattern match:
fooOpt match {
case Some(Foo(_: Int | _: String)) => doSomething
case _ => doSomethingElse
}
If you want to get the Int or String out, just split that case:
fooOpt match {
case Some(Foo(i: Int)) => doSomething
case Some(Foo(s: String)) => doSomething
case _ => doSomethingElse
}
Is there other way?
Although the solution with one big patten match works(and can be used if you really can't change bar to anything more specific than Any), it is not a proper 'Scala way' of dealing with this situations in general if you have control over Foo.
A better way would be to make Foo generic:
case class Foo[T](bar: T)
And have either a generic doSomething, if it can work with any particular T:
def doSomething[T](foo: Foo[T]): SomeType = ???
or to have different versions of it for different possible T's you have, if it should react on them differently:
def doSomethingWithString(foo: Foo[String]): SomeType = ???
def doSomethingWithInt(foo: Foo[Int]): SomeType = ???
Then you can use it just like this:
val fooOpt = Some(Foo("bar as String"))
fooOpt.map(doSomething).orElse(doSomethingElse)
or like this:
val fooOptString = Some(Foo("bar as String"))
fooOptString.map(doSomethingWithString).orElse(doSomethingElse)
val fooOptInt = Some(Foo(1))
fooOptInt.map(doSomethingWithInt).orElse(doSomethingElse)
So, in this case compiler checks types for you, answering to:
Is it possible to check for the type of bar directly?
And in many situations you can avoid using pattern match at all, using methods like map, orElse, etc. with proper typing. This might be an answer for this:
could also rewrite to use just one case

Matching a sequence within a sequence in scala

I'm looking to match a sequence within a sequence like either in ex 1 or ex 2;
List(1, 2, 3, 4) match {
case 1 :: List(_*) :: 4 :: tail => // Ex 1
case 1 :: (seq : List[Int]) :: 4 :: tail => // Ex 2
case _ =>
}
This is a variant to the fixed length sequence pattern _*. Like the _*, I don't care about the content of the inner pattern, but it is important that the length can vary and that the pattern is surrounded by a prefix (such as the 1 above) and a suffix (like the 4).
My question is if any of you have a trick to do this by some crafty unapply magic or if you'd just iterate the list to search for the sequence manually.
Thanks in advance! :-)
This is really outside the scope of what pattern matching is supposed to be used for. Even if you could finagle a set of custom unapply methods to do what you wanted, it wouldn't be apparent whether matching was greedy or not, etc..
However, if you really want to, you can proceed as follows (for example):
import scala.collection.SeqLike
class Decon[A](a0: A, a1: A) {
def unapply[C <: SeqLike[A, C]](xs: C with SeqLike[A, C]): Option[(C, C)] = {
xs.span(_ != a1) match {
case (a0 +: pre, a1 +: post) => Some((pre,post))
case _ => None
}
}
}
val Dc = new Decon(1,4)
scala> List(1,2,3,4,5) match { case Dc(pre, post) => (pre, post); case _ => (Nil, Nil) }
res1: (List[Int], List[Int]) = (List(2, 3),List(5))
Separating the specification of the fixed elements 1 and 4 from the match is necessary; otherwise the normal algorithm would ask the unapply to return values without any knowledge of what was being sought, and then would test to make sure they were correct.
You could do something like this:
List(1,2,3,4) match {
case 1 :: tail if tail.last == 4 => println("Found it!")
}
But if you check the implementation of last in LinearSeqOptimized:
def last: A = {
if (isEmpty) throw new NoSuchElementException
var these = this
var nx = these.tail
while (!nx.isEmpty) {
these = nx
nx = nx.tail
}
these.head
}
It is iterating indeed. This is because List inherits from LinearSeq which are optimized to provide efficient head and tail operations. For what you want to do, it is better to use an IndexedSeq implementation like Vector which has an optimized length operation, used in last:
override /*TraversableLike*/ def last: A = {
if (isEmpty) throw new UnsupportedOperationException("empty.last")
apply(length-1)
}
So you could do something like this:
Vector(1,2,3,4) match {
case v if v.head == 1 && v.last == 4 => println("Found it!")
}

Scala matching, resolving the same variable from two different patterns

Say I have the following
case class IntWrap(value:Int)
I would like to extract the same variable from two cases as follows:
x match {
case value:Int | IntWrap(value) => dosomethingwith(x)
case _ => ???
}
but the only way I have been able to do this is as:
x match {
case value:Int => dosomethingwith(x)
case IntWrap(value) => dosomethingwith(x)
case _ => ???
}
Is there a better way, as in my real life case dosomething is actually a large block of code which is not so easy to encapsulate.
If it is really the case that you want to do something with x, not with the extracted value, then the following would work:
case class IntWrap(value:Int) // extends T
def dosomethingwith(x: Any) = x
val x: Any = IntWrap(101)
x match {
case _: Int | _: IntWrap => dosomethingwith(x)
case _ => ???
}
If you actually want to work with the extracted value, you could factor out the corresponding match block into its own extractor and reuse that wherever necessary:
x match {
case Unwrap(value) => dosomethingwith(value)
case _ => ???
}
object Unwrap {
def unapply(x: Any) = x match {
case x: Int => Some((x))
case IntWrap(value) => Some((value))
case _ => None
}
}
I honestly don't see an issue with the way you are doing things. As long as dosomethingwith is a separate function then I don't see any issues with duplicate code. If your code looked like this then I don't see any need to come up with other solutions:
def foo(x:Any){
x match {
case value:Int => dosomethingwith(value)
case IntWrap(value) => dosomethingwith(value)
case _ => ???
}
}
def dosomethingwith(x:Int){
//do something complicated here...
}
I came up with sth a little bit different, but it may help you avoid duplicates:
case class IntWrap(value: Int)
implicit def intWrapToInt(intWrap: IntWrap) = intWrap.value
def matchInt(x: AnyVal) = x match {
case i: Int => println("int or intWrap")
case _ => println("other")
}
//test
matchInt(IntWrap(12)) //prints int or intWrap
matchInt(12) //prints int or intWrap
matchInt("abc") //prints other
It won't work for every reference, though. So, be careful.