Updating a 2d table of counts - scala

Question

Suppose I want a Scala data structure that implements a 2-dimensional table of counts that can change over time (i.e., individual cells in the table can be incremented or decremented). What should I be using to do this?
I could use a 2-dimensional array:
val x = Array.fill[Int](1, 2) = 0
x(1)(2) += 1
But Arrays are mutable, and I guess I should slightly prefer immutable data structures.
So I thought about using a 2-dimensional Vector:
val x = Vector.fill[Int](1, 2) = 0
// how do I update this? I want to write something like val newX : Vector[Vector[Int]] = x.add((1, 2), 1)
// but I'm not sure how
But I'm not sure how to get a new vector with only a single element changed.
What's the best approach?

Answer 1

Best depends on what your criteria are. The simplest immutable variant is to use a map from (Int,Int) to your count:
var c = (for (i <- 0 to 99; j <- 0 to 99) yield (i,j) -> 0).toMap
Then you access your values with c(i,j) and set them with c += ((i,j) -> n); c += ((i,j) -> (c(i,j)+1)) is a little bit annoying, but it's not too bad.
Faster is to use nested Vectors--by about a factor of 2 to 3, depending on whether you tend to re-set the same element over and over or not--but it has an ugly update method:
var v = Vector.fill(100,100)(0)
v(82)(49) // Easy enough
v = v.updated(82, v(82).updated(49, v(82)(49)+1) // Ouch!
Faster yet (by about 2x) is to have only one vector which you index into:
var u = Vector.fill(100*100)(0)
u(82*100 + 49) // Um, you think I can always remember to do this right?
u = u.updated(82*100 + 49, u(82*100 + 49)+1) // Well, that's actually better
If you don't need immutability and your table size isn't going to change, just use an array as you've shown. It's ~200x faster than the fastest vector solution if all you're doing is incrementing and decrementing an integer.

Answer 2

If you want to do this in a very general and functional (but not necessarily performant) way, you can use lenses. Here's an example of how you could use Scalaz 7's implementation, for example:
import scalaz._
def at[A](i: Int): Lens[Seq[A], A] = Lens.lensg(a => a.updated(i, _), (_(i)))
def at2d[A](i: Int, j: Int) = at[Seq[A]](i) andThen at(j)
And a little bit of setup:
val table = Vector.tabulate(3, 4)(_ + _)
def show[A](t: Seq[Seq[A]]) = t.map(_ mkString " ") mkString "\n"
Which gives us:
scala> show(table)
res0: String =
0 1 2 3
1 2 3 4
2 3 4 5
We can use our lens like this:
scala> show(at2d(1, 2).set(table, 9))
res1: String =
0 1 2 3
1 2 9 4
2 3 4 5
Or we can just get the value at a given cell:
scala> val v: Int = at2d(2, 3).get(table)
v: Int = 5
Or do a lot of more complex things, like apply a function to a particular cell:
scala> show(at2d(2, 2).mod(((_: Int) * 2), table))
res8: String =
0 1 2 3
1 2 3 4
2 3 8 5
And so on.

Answer 3

There isn't a built-in method for this, perhaps because it would require the Vector to know that it contains Vectors, or Vectors or Vectors etc, whereas most methods are generic, and it would require a separate method for each number of dimensions, because you need to specify a co-ordinate arg for each dimension.
However, you can add these yourself; the following will take you up to 4D, although you could just add the bits for 2D if that's all you need:
object UpdatableVector {
implicit def vectorToUpdatableVector2[T](v: Vector[Vector[T]]) = new UpdatableVector2(v)
implicit def vectorToUpdatableVector3[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]) = new UpdatableVector3(v)
implicit def vectorToUpdatableVector4[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]]) = new UpdatableVector4(v)
class UpdatableVector2[T](v: Vector[Vector[T]]) {
def updated2(c1: Int, c2: Int)(newVal: T) =
v.updated(c1, v(c1).updated(c2, newVal))
}
class UpdatableVector3[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]) {
def updated3(c1: Int, c2: Int, c3: Int)(newVal: T) =
v.updated(c1, v(c1).updated2(c2, c3)(newVal))
}
class UpdatableVector4[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]]) {
def updated4(c1: Int, c2: Int, c3: Int, c4: Int)(newVal: T) =
v.updated(c1, v(c1).updated3(c2, c3, c4)(newVal))
}
}
In Scala 2.10 you don't need the implicit defs and can just add the implicit keyword to the class definitions.
Test:
import UpdatableVector._
val v2 = Vector.fill(2,2)(0)
val r2 = v2.updated2(1,1)(42)
println(r2) // Vector(Vector(0, 0), Vector(0, 42))
val v3 = Vector.fill(2,2,2)(0)
val r3 = v3.updated3(1,1,1)(42)
println(r3) // etc
Hope that's useful.