Consolidating a data table in Scala - scala

Question

I am working on a small data analysis tool, and practicing/learning Scala in the process. However I got stuck at a small problem.
Assume data of type:
X Gr1 x_11 ... x_1n
X Gr2 x_21 ... x_2n
..
X GrK x_k1 ... x_kn
Y Gr1 y_11 ... y_1n
Y Gr3 y_31 ... y_3n
..
Y Gr(K-1) ...
Here I have entries (X,Y...) that may or may not exist in up to K groups, with a series of values for each group. What I want to do is pretty simple (in theory), I would like to consolidate the rows that belong to the same "entity" in different groups. so instead of multiple lines that start with X, I want to have one row with all values from x_11 to x_kn in columns.
What makes things complicated however is that not all entities exist in all groups. So wherever there's "missing data" I would like to pad with for instance zeroes, or some string that denotes a missing value. So if I have (X,Y,Z) in up to 3 groups, the type I table I want to have is as follows:
X x_11 x_12 x_21 x_22 x_31 x_32
Y y_11 y_12 N/A N/A y_31 y_32
Z N/A N/A z_21 z_22 N/A N/A
I have been stuck trying to figure this out, is there a smart way to use List functions to solve this?
I wrote this simple loop:
for {
(id, hitlist) <- hits.groupBy(_.acc)
h <- hitlist
} println(id + "\t" + h.sampleId + "\t" + h.ratios.mkString("\t"))
to able to generate the tables that look like the example above. Note that, my original data is of a different format and layout,but that has little to do with the problem at hand, thus I have skipped all steps regarding parsing. I should be able to use groupBy in a better way that actually solves this for me, but I can't seem to get there.
Then I modified my loop mapping the hits to ratios and appending them to one another:
for ((id, hitlist) <- hits.groupBy(_.acc)){
val l = hitlist.map(_.ratios).foldRight(List[Double]()){
(l1: List[Double], l2: List[Double]) => l1 ::: l2
}
println(id + "\t" + l.mkString("\t"))
//println(id + "\t" + h.sampleId + "\t" + h.ratios.mkString("\t"))
}
That gets me one step closer but still no cigar! Instead of a fully padded "matrix" I get a jagged table. Taking the example above:
X x_11 x_12 x_21 x_22 x_31 x_32
Y y_11 y_12 y_31 y_32
Z z_21 z_22
Any ideas as to how I can pad the table so that values from respective groups are aligned with one another? I should be able to use _.sampleId, which holds the "group membersip" for each "hit", but I am not sure how exactly. ´hits´ is a List of type Hit which is practically a wrapper for each row, giving convenience methods for getting individual values, so essentially a tuple which have "named indices" (such as .acc, .sampleId..)
(I would like to solve this problem without hardcoding the number of groups, as it might change from case to case)
Thanks!

Answer 1

This is a bit of a contrived example, but I think you can see where this is going:
case class Hit(acc:String, subAcc:String, value:Int)
val hits = List(Hit("X", "x_11", 1), Hit("X", "x_21", 2), Hit("X", "x_31", 3))
val kMax = 4
val nMax = 2
for {
(id, hitlist) <- hits.groupBy(_.acc)
k <- 1 to kMax
n <- 1 to nMax
} yield {
val subId = "x_%s%s".format(k, n)
val row = hitlist.find(h => h.subAcc == subId).getOrElse(Hit(id, subId, 0))
println(row)
}
//Prints
Hit(X,x_11,1)
Hit(X,x_12,0)
Hit(X,x_21,2)
Hit(X,x_22,0)
Hit(X,x_31,3)
Hit(X,x_32,0)
Hit(X,x_41,0)
Hit(X,x_42,0)
If you provide more information on your hits lists then we could probably come with something a little more accurate.

Answer 2

I have managed to solve this problem with the following code, I am putting it here as an answer in case someone else runs into a similar problem and requires some help. The use of find() from Noah's answer was definitely very useful, so do give him a +1 in case this code snippet helps you out.
val samples = hits.groupBy(_.sampleId).keys.toList.sorted
for ((id, hitlist) <- hits.groupBy(_.acc)) {
val ratios =
for (sample <- samples)
yield hitlist.find(h => h.sampleId == sample).map(_.ratios)
.getOrElse(List(Double.NaN, Double.NaN, Double.NaN, Double.NaN, Double.NaN, Double.NaN))
println(id + "\t" + ratios.flatten.mkString("\t"))
}
I figure it's not a very elegant or efficient solution, as I have two calls to groupBy and I would be interested to see better solutions to this problem.