How to replace a character in a string using index in clojure - clojure

I want to replace a character in a string using index. How to do that? Or is there any other way of accessing it?

Like almost everything commonly used in Clojure, strings are immutable, so you need to create a new string with the new character in place of the old at the desired location:
(defn replace-at [s idx replacement]
(str (subs s 0 idx) replacement (subs s (inc idx))))
> (replace-at "012345" 2 "x")
01x345

Strings are immutable, but StringBuilderss are not, so you could leverage that:
(defn set-char-at [^String s idx ch]
(str (doto (StringBuilder. s) (.setCharAt idx ch))))
(set-char-at "foobar" 2 \x) ;;=> "foxbar"

Related

Is it bad practice to try and keep track of iterations while using reduce/map in Clojure?

So being new to Clojure and functional programming in general, I sometimes (to quote a book) "feel like your favourite tool has been taken from you". Trying to get a better grasp on this stuff I'm doing string manipulation problems.
So knowing the functional paradigm is all about recursion (and other things) I've been using tail recursive functions to do things I'd normally do with loops, then trying to implement using map or reduce. For those more experienced, does this sound like a sane thing to do?
I'm starting to get frustrated because I'm running into problems where I need to keep track of the index of each character when iterating over strings but that's proving difficult because reduce and map feel "isolated". I can't increment a value while a string is being reduced...
Is there something I'm missing; a function for exactly this.. Or can this specific case just not be implemented using these core functions? Or is the way I'm going about it just wrong and un-functional-like which is why I'm stuck?
Here's an example I'm having:
This function takes five separate strings then using reduce, builds a vector containing all the characters at position char-at in each string. How could you change this code so that char-at (in the anonymous function) gets incremented after each string gets passed? This is what I mean by it feels "isolated" and I don't know how to get around this.
(defn new-string-from-five
"This function takes a character at position char-at from each of the strings to make a new vector"
[five-strings char-at]
(reduce (fn [result string]
(conj result (get-char-at string char-at)))
[]
five-strings))
Old :
"abc" "def" "ghi" "jkl" "mno" -> [a d g j m] (always taken from index 0)
Modified :
"abc" "def" "ghi" "jkl" "mno" ->[a e i j n] (index gets incremented and loops back around)
I don't think there's anything insane about writing string manip functions to get your head around things, though it's certainly not the only way. I personally found clojure for the brave and true, 4clojure, and the clojurians slack channel most helpful when learning clojure.
On your question, probably the most common thing to do would be to add an index to your initial collection (in this case a string) using map-indexed
(user=> (map-indexed vector [9 9 9])
([0 9] [1 9] [2 9])
So for your example
(defn new-string-from-five
"This function takes a character at position char-at from each of the strings to make a new vector"
[five-strings char-at]
(reduce (fn [result [string-idx string]]
(conj result (get-char-at string (+ string-idx char-at))))
[]
(map-indexed vector five-strings)))
But how would I build map-indexed? Well
Non-lazily:
(defn map-indexed' [f coll]
(loop [idx 0
res []
rest-coll coll]
(if (empty? rest-coll)
res
(recur (inc idx) (conj res (f idx (first rest-coll))) (rest rest-coll)))))
Lazily (recommend not trying to understand this yet):
(defn map-indexed' [f coll]
(letfn [(map-indexed'' [idx f coll]
(if (empty? coll)
'()
(lazy-seq (conj (map-indexed'' (inc idx) f (rest coll)) (f idx (first coll))))))]
(map-indexed'' 0 f coll)))
You can use reductions:
(defn new-string-from-five
[five-strings]
(->> five-strings
(reductions
(fn [[res i] string]
[(get-char-at string i) (inc i)])
[nil 0])
rest
(mapv first)))
But in this case, I think map, mapv or map-indexed is cleaner. E.g.
(map-indexed
(fn [i s] (get-char-at s i))
["abc" "def" "ghi" "jkl" "mno"])

How do I create a function that replaces a substring given its start and end indexes with another string

I have a string "Hello" and I want to replace the characters between the two indexes with another string, say "Foo". E.g.
(defn new-replace [orig-str start-index end-index new-string] ...)
(= "Foollo" (new-replace "Hello" 0 2 "Foo")) => true
(= "Foolo" (new-replace "Hello" 0 3 "Foo")) => true
Any suggestions? Cheers
Here's one way:
(defn new-replace [orig-str start-index end-index new-string]
(str (apply str (take start-index orig-str))
new-string
(apply str (drop end-index orig-str))))
Stringbuffer already provieds a replace function:
(defn new-replace [orig-str start-index end-index new-string]
(str (.replace (StringBuffer. orig-str) start-index end-index new-string)))

clojure split string into different size chunks

I'm trying to split a string into n chunks of variable sizes.
As input I have a seq of the sizes of the different chunks:
(10 6 12)
And a string:
"firstchunksecondthirdandlast"
I would like to split the string using the sizes as so:
("firstchunk" "second" "thirdandlast")
As a newbie I still have a hard time wrapping my head around the most idiomatic way to do this.
Here is two ways to do this:
One version uses reduce which you can use very often if you want to carry some kind of state (here: The index where you're currently at). The reduce would need a second fn call applied to it to have the result in your form.
;; Simply take second as a result:
(let [s "firstchunksecondthirdandlast"]
(reduce
(fn [[s xs] len]
[(subs s len)
(conj xs (subs s 0 len))])
[s []]
[10 6 12]))
The other version first builds up the indices of start-end and then uses destructing to get them out of the sequence:
(let [s "firstchunksecondthirdandlast"]
(mapv
(fn [[start end]]
(subs s start end))
;; Build up the start-end indices:
(partition 2 1 (reductions + (cons 0 [10 6 12])))))
Note that neither of these are robust and throw ugly errors if the string it too short. So you should be much more defensive and use some asserts.
Here is my go at the problem (still a beginner with the language), it uses an anonymous function and recursion until the chunks list is empty. I have found this pattern useful when wanting to accumulate results until a condition is met.
str-orig chunks-orig [] sets the initial arguments for the anonymous function: the full string, full list of chunks and an empty vec to collect results into.
(defn split-chunks [str-orig chunks-orig]
((fn [str chunks result]
(if-let [len (first chunks)] (recur
(subs str len)
(rest chunks)
(conj result (subs str 0 len)))
result))
str-orig chunks-orig []))
(split-chunks "firstchunksecondthirdandlast" '(10 6 12))
; ["firstchunk" "second" "thirdandlast"]

what is the idiomatic way to write this clojure snippet to concat collection with a string?

Its best to explain what I am trying using an example.
Given a collection ["apple" "orange" "banana"] and concatenation string "," function should produce "apple,orange,banana"
Is this the idiomatic way to write this function?
user=> (defn my-concat[x st]
(str (first x) (apply str (map #(str st %) (rest x)))))
user=> (my-concat "abcd" "!")
"a!b!c!d"
You can use the interpose function if you want a sequence, or clojure.string/join if you just want the string result.

Return the first non empty/blank value?

I have 2 bindings I'm calling path and callback.
What I am trying to do is to return the first non-empty one. In javascript it would look like this:
var final = path || callback || "";
How do I do this in clojure?
I was looking at the "some" function but I can't figure out how to combine the compjure.string/blank check in it. I currently have this as a test, which doesn't work. In this case, it should return nil I think.
(some (clojure.string/blank?) ["1" "2" "3"])
In this case, it should return 2
(some (clojure.string/blank?) ["" "2" "3"])
(first (filter (complement clojure.string/blank?) ["" "a" "b"]))
Edit: As pointed out in the comments, (filter (complement p) ...) can be rewritten as (remove p ...):
(first (remove clojure.string/blank? ["" "a" "b"]))
If you are so lucky to have "empty values" represented by nil and/or false you could use:
(or nil false "2" "3")
Which would return "2".
An equivalent to your JavaScript example would be:
(let [final (or path callback "")]
(println final))
If you want the first non blank string of a sequence you can use something like this:
(first (filter #(not (clojure.string/blank? %)) ["" "2" "3"]))
This will return 2
What i don't understand is your first example using the some function, you said that it should return nil but the first non blank string is "1".
This is how you would use the some function:
(some #(when-not (empty? %) %) ["" "foo" ""])
"foo"
(some #(when-not (empty? %) %) ["bar" "foo" ""])
"bar"
As others have pointed out, filter is another option:
(first (filter #(not (empty? %)) ["" "" "foo"])
"foo"
A third option would be to use recursion:
(defn first-non-empty [& x]
(let [[y & z] x]
(if (not (empty? y))
y
(when z (recur z)))))
(first-non-empty "" "bar" "")
"bar"
(first-non-empty "" "" "foo")
"foo"
(first-non-empty "" "" "")
nil
I used empty? instead of blank? to save on typing, but the only difference should be how whitespace is handled.
It was difficult for me to tell exactly what you wanted, so this is my understanding of what you are trying to do.
In my case, I wanted to find if an item in one report was missing in a second report. A match returned nil, and a non-match returned the actual item that did not match.
The following functions wind up comparing the value of a mapped value with a key.
Using something like find-first is probably what you want to do.
(defn find-first
"This is a helper function that uses filter, a comparision value, and
stops comparing once the first match is found. The actual match
is returned, and nil is returned if comparision value is not matched."
[pred col]
(first (filter pred col)))
(defn str-cmp
"Takes two strings and compares them. Returns 0 if a match; and nil if not."
[str-1 str-2 cmp-start-pos substr-len]
(let [computed-str-len (ret-lowest-str-len str-1 str-2 substr-len)
rc-1 (subs str-1 cmp-start-pos computed-str-len)
rc-2 (subs str-2 cmp-start-pos computed-str-len)]
(if (= 0 (compare rc-1 rc-2))
0
nil)))
(defn cmp-one-val
"Return nil if first key match found,
else the original comparision row is returned.
cmp-row is a single sequence of data from a map. i
cmp-key is the key to extract the comparision value.
cmp-seq-vals contain a sequence derived from
one key in a sequence of maps.
cmp-start and substr-len are start and stop
comparision indicies for str-cmp."
[cmp-row cmp-key cmp-seq-vals cmp-start substr-len]
(if (find-first #(str-cmp (cmp-key cmp-row) %1 cmp-start substr-len) cmp-seq-vals)
nil
cmp-row))