Itertools

The Haxelib package can be found here.

Many languages have a fluent API that helps working with sequences and sequence manipulation: C# has LINQ, Java has Stream, Rust has std::iter::Iterator, C++ has Ranges and so on.

These APIs allow us to express complex transformations in a compact and declarative manner. Haxe has the Lambda class, which has a couple of problems:

• It is eagerly evaluated, the results are usually immediately collected into an Array<T>. This can be both wasteful, and constrasining, as it does not allow for potentially infinite sequences.

• It lacks quite a few operations: There's no skipping, zipping, reversing, checking if a predicate is true for all/any elements, ...

• The API is not fluent, as it works on Iterable<T>s instead of Iterator<T>s.

This library attempts to fill this hole in the Haxe ecosystem.

Examples

Collecting the names of students into a comma-separated string, who have have an average over 4:

var names = students
    .filter(s -> s.average() > 4)
    .map(s -> s.name)
    .join(", ");

Maturity

Please note, that the library is still early-stage. If you feel like something fundamental/useful is missing, please open an issue!

Provided functionality

The library can be used through just 2 types: Iterators and Extensions. The Iterators class contains functions that construct elemental iterators, like a basic counter, or repeating an element infinitely. The Extensions class contains extension functions for iterators, thus it is advised to use it with using itertools.Extensions;.

All operations (unless they reduce to a final result, like all or count) are lazy, meaning that they only perform computations, when they are iterated.

Contents of Iterators:

• count(start = 0, step = 1): Creates an infinite Int counter iterator, starting from start, stepping step each time.

• repeat(element): Creates an infinite iterator, that repeats element.

Contents of Extensions:

• toArray(it): Collects the elements of it into an Array<T>.

• toMap(it, keySel): Collects the elements of it into a Map<K, V>, using the keys that keySel selects from each element.

• toMapProj(it, keySel, valSel): Same as toMap, but the values are also selected with valSel.

• join(it, sep): Joins the elements of it with sep into a String, using StringBuf.add.

• first(it): Retrieves the first element of it.

• last(it): Retrieves the last element of it.

• nth(it, n): Retrieves the nth element of it.

• all(it, pred): Checks, if pred is true for all elements of it.

• any(it, pred): Checks, if pred is true for any element of it.

• count(it): Counts the number of elements in it.

• find(it, pred): Finds the first element in it, where pred is true.

• map(it, f): Transforms each element of it using f.

• filter(it, pred): Filters the elements of it, only keeping the elements where pred returns true.

• filterMap(it, f): Filters and transforms the elements of it using f. Only those elements are kept, where f returns Some(x).

• enumerate(it): Appends the index to each element of it (making it Indexed<T>).

• zip(it1, it2): Pairs up each element of it1 and it2 into a Pair<T, U>.

• chain(it1, it2): Chains the start of it2 to the end of it1.

• skip(it, n): Skips the first n elements of it.

• skipWhile(it, pred): Skips the first elements of it, as long as pred is true for them.

• take(it, n): Only keeps the first n elements of it.

• takeWhile(it, pred): Only keeps the first elements of it, as long as pred is true for them.

• scanl(it, seed, acc): Performs a step-by-step reduction, tarting with seed, and feeding the partial result and the next element of it into acc. Essentially a step-by-step foldl.

• foldl(it, seed, acc): Performs a fold left operation, starting with seed, feeding in the elements of it and the partial result into acc.

• flatten(it): Flattens an iterator of iterators into a flat element structure (Iterator<Iterator<T>> -> Iterator<T>).

• flatMap(it, f): Transforms each element of it into a sequence, that are then flattened.

• reverse(it): Reverses the order of the elements of it.

• groupBy(it, keySel:T): Groups elements of it, selecting the group key with keySel.