From: duerst@... Date: 2020-07-25T07:49:35+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:99328] [Ruby master Feature#17016] Enumerable#scan_left Issue #17016 has been updated by duerst (Martin D��rst). nobu (Nobuyoshi Nakada) wrote in #note-23: > RubyBugs (A Nonymous) wrote in #note-19: > > In keeping with the Ruby-ish collection methods that end with "-ect", how about > > * **`reflect`** -- the idea is to contrast with `inject`, this "reflects" all intermediate states > > * **`project`** -- the idea is that the original `Enumerable` is "projected" in a mathematical sense into the plane defined by the stateful function that is passed in > > I'd like that ���this "reflects" all intermediate states��� part. I think this is way too generic. In the same vein, we could call it "return", because it returns all intermediate states. Also, I think "project" isn't appropriate, because project is usually associated with a dimension reduction. The most specific word in the above explanation is "intermediate". I suggest we search more along these lines. An example would be something like "inject_with_intermediates". BTW, I also checked APL, where '\' is used for what we are discussing here, and is called scan. The fact that this is included in APL shows that this is in some sense a core operation. It doesn't appear e.g. in a 1972 manual for IBM APL\360 (http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Manuals/APL360UsersManuals), which means it may not have been there from the start. But I found some hints in a newer document (1982, http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/apl/Manuals/SharpAPLManualCorrections). My guess is that the name did not come from APL (which is one of the oldest functional programming languages). ---------------------------------------- Feature #17016: Enumerable#scan_left https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/17016#change-86723 * Author: parker (Parker Finch) * Status: Open * Priority: Normal ---------------------------------------- ## Proposal Add a `#scan_left` method to `Enumerable`. (The name "scan_left" is based on Scala's scanLeft and Haskell's scanl. It seems like "scan_left" would be a ruby-ish name for this concept, but I'm curious if there are other thoughts on naming here!) ## Background `#scan_left` is similar to `#inject`, but it accumulates the partial results that are computed. As a comparison: ``` [1, 2, 3].inject(0, &:+) => 6 [1, 2, 3].scan_left(0, &:+) => [0, 1, 3, 6] ``` Notably, the `scan_left` operation can be done lazily since it doesn't require processing the entire collection before computing a value. I recently described `#scan_left`, and its relationship to `#inject`, more thoroughly in [this blog post](https://medium.com/building-panorama-education/scan-left-a-lazy-incremental-alternative-to-inject-f6e946f74c00). ## Reasoning We heavily rely on the scan operation. We use an [event-sourcing](https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/EventSourcing.html) pattern, which means that we are scanning over individual "events" and building up the corresponding state. We rely on the history of states and need to do this lazily (we stream events because they cannot fit in memory). Thus the scan operation is much more applicable than the inject operation. We suspect that there are many applications that could leverage the scan operation. [This question](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1475808/cumulative-array-sum-in-ruby) would be more easily answered by `#scan_left`. It is a natural fit for any application that needs to store the incrementally-computed values of an `#inject`, and a requirement for an application that needs to use `#inject` while maintaining laziness. ## Implementation There is a Ruby implementation of this functionality [here](https://github.com/panorama-ed/scan_left/) and an implementation in C [here](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/3078). ## Counterarguments Introducing a new public method is committing to maintenance going forward and expands the size of the Ruby codebase -- it should not be done lightly. I think that providing the functionality here is worth the tradeoff, but I understand any hesitation to add yet more to Ruby! ---Files-------------------------------- scan_left_example.rb (2.93 KB) -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: