I was trying some Clojure, but now puzzled about the behavior of the "conj".
See the exaples below:
user=> (conj [1 2 3] 4)
[1 2 3 4]
Above is expected.
But now, if I do the below:
user=> (conj (reverse [1 2 3]) 4)
(4 3 2 1)
It returns (4 3 2 1). But I guess it should have returned (3 2 1 4). So, what am I missing here?
reverse returns a list.
(reverse [1 2 3])
=> (3 2 1)
conj has the behavior of adding something to a collection as cheaply as possible. For vectors, it'd be appending. For lists, it'd be pre-pending.
For example:
(conj '(1 2 3) 4)
=> (4 1 2 3)
Related
Why does clojure.core/rest output a list when input is a vector?
This creates an unexpected effect:
(conj [1 2 3] 4)
; => [1 2 3 4]
(conj (rest [1 2 3]) 4)
; => (4 2 3)
I know that "it calls seq on its argument" from the docs which creates this effect. I don't understand why this is the desired effect. As a naïve user, I would expect (rest [1 2 3]) to behave like (subvec [1 2 3] 1). I know I could just use subvec for my use case. For the sake of learning, I would like to understand the rationale of rest, and use cases where outputting a list is desirable (even when the input is a vector).
The output of rest is NOT a list, but a seq, which is an even lower level abstraction. From the official documentation for rest:
Returns a possibly empty seq of the items after the first. Calls seq on its
argument.
The confusion arises from the fact that both are printed between parens, but if you look closely, they are different:
user=> (list? (rest [1 2 3]))
false
user=> (seq? (rest [1 2 3]))
true
How it's a seq different from a list? seqs are implemented with an Interface that requires implementing first, rest and cons, but details are up to the collection implementation. For instance, vectors use their own implementation:
user=> (class (rest [1 2 3]))
clojure.lang.PersistentVector$ChunkedSeq
user=> (class (rest '(1 2 3)))
clojure.lang.PersistentList
List are an implementation that at least extends a basic Seq interface, and builds on top. For instance, clojure.lang.PersistentList implements the Counted interface which requires a constant-time version of count.
For a detailed description of the differences between Seqs and Lists, check these links:
Differences between a seq and a list
https://clojure.org/reference/sequences
You make a good case for rest on a vector returning a vector. The trouble is that rest is one of the fundamental operations on sequences, and a vector is not a sequence:
=> (seq? [1 2 3 4])
false
However, if rest can accept a seqable thing such as a vector, you could say that it ought to be able to return such.
What does it return?
=> (type (rest [1 2 3 4]))
clojure.lang.PersistentVector$ChunkedSeq
This gives every appearance of being a subvec wrapped in a seq call.
I know that "it calls seq on its argument"
That is correct. Seqs are implemented with an Interface (ISeq) that requires implementing first, rest and cons.
rest takes any Seq'able (any collection that implements ISequable). The reason for using this is efficiency and simplicity.
The way different collection works, the most efficient way of getting the first and rest is different.
Which is why when you convert one collection into a seq, it will come with the most efficient implementation on rest and the others.
I hope this was clear
I agree that this behavior is unexpected and counterintuitive. As a workaround, I created the append and prepend functions in the Tupelo library.
From the docs, we see examples:
Clojure has the cons, conj, and concat functions, but it is not obvious how they should be used to add a new value to the beginning of a vector or list:
; Add to the end
> (concat [1 2] 3) ;=> IllegalArgumentException
> (cons [1 2] 3) ;=> IllegalArgumentException
> (conj [1 2] 3) ;=> [1 2 3]
> (conj [1 2] 3 4) ;=> [1 2 3 4]
> (conj '(1 2) 3) ;=> (3 1 2) ; oops
> (conj '(1 2) 3 4) ;=> (4 3 1 2) ; oops
; Add to the beginning
> (conj 1 [2 3] ) ;=> ClassCastException
> (concat 1 [2 3] ) ;=> IllegalArgumentException
> (cons 1 [2 3] ) ;=> (1 2 3)
> (cons 1 2 [3 4] ) ;=> ArityException
> (cons 1 '(2 3) ) ;=> (1 2 3)
> (cons 1 2 '(3 4) ) ;=> ArityException
Do you know what conj does when you pass it nil instead of a sequence? It silently replaces it with an empty list: (conj nil 5) ⇒ (5) This can cause you to accumulate items in reverse order if you aren’t aware of the default behavior:
(-> nil
(conj 1)
(conj 2)
(conj 3))
;=> (3 2 1)
These failures are irritating and unproductive, and the error messages don’t make it obvious what went wrong. Instead, use the simple prepend and append functions to add new elements to the beginning or end of a sequence, respectively:
(append [1 2] 3 ) ;=> [1 2 3 ]
(append [1 2] 3 4) ;=> [1 2 3 4]
(prepend 3 [2 1]) ;=> [ 3 2 1]
(prepend 4 3 [2 1]) ;=> [4 3 2 1]
Both prepend and append always return a vector result.
The following line: (repeat 4 [2 3])
gives me this: ([2 3] [2 3] [2 3] [2 3])
How do I create one vector or list from the above list of vectors so that I get this?: [2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3]
Thanks
concat is in fact exactly the function you want
user> (apply concat (repeat 4 [2 3]))
(2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3)
this even works with lazy input:
user> (take 8 (apply concat (repeat [2 3])))
(2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3)
This is an alternative:
user> (def flatten-1 (partial mapcat identity))
#'user/flatten-1
user> (flatten-1 (repeat 4 [2 3]))
(2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3)
it is compatible with laziness and unlike flatten preserves any substructure (only doing one level of flattening)
user> (take 12 (flatten-1 (repeat [2 3 [4]])))
(2 3 [4] 2 3 [4] 2 3 [4] 2 3 [4])
(take 8 (cycle [2 3]))
;; => (2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3)
(flatten x)
Takes any nested combination of sequential things (lists,
vectors, etc.) and returns their contents as a single, flat sequence.
(flatten nil) returns nil.
(flatten (repeat 4 [2 3])) ;(2 3 2 3 2 3 2 3)
Pedantically speaking, you asked for a vector, so:
(->> [2 3] cycle (take 8) vec)
I feel cycle is a little more appropriate than concat (though it uses concat itself) as it indicates "cycle through the elements of this sequence" rather than "concatenate the following sequences together". Just my two cents, matter of opinion.
What is the difference between the -> and ->> macros in Clojure?
The docs A. Webb linked to explain the "what", but don't do a good job of the "why".
As a rule, when a function works on a singular subject, that subject is the first argument (e.g., conj, assoc). When a function works on a sequence subject, that subject is the last argument (e.g., map, filter).
So, -> and ->> are documented as threading the first and last arguments respectively, but it is also useful to think of them as applying to singular or sequential arguments respectively.
For example, we can consider a vector as a singular object:
(-> [1 2 3]
(conj 4) ; (conj [1 2 3] 4)
(conj 5) ; (conj [1 2 3 4] 5)
(assoc 0 0)) ; (assoc [1 2 3 4 5] 0 0)
=> [0 2 3 4 5]
Or we can consider it as a sequence:
(->> [1 2 3]
(map inc) ; (map inc [1 2 3])
(map inc) ; (map inc (2 3 4))
(concat [0 2])) ; (concat [0 2] (3 4 5))
=> (0 2 3 4 5)
I want to compare two vectors and find out if the items they have are the same no matter the order the items are in.
So..
right now in clojure:
(= [1 2 3] [3 2 1]) ;=> false
I want:
(other_fun [1 2 3] [3 2 1]) ;=> true
(other_fun [1 2 3 4] [3 2 1]) ;=> false
I could not find a containsAll like in java
If you do care about duplicates, you can compare their frequency maps. These are maps with each collection element as a key and number of occurrences as a value. You create them using standard function frequencies, like in given examples.
Different order, same number of duplicates:
(= (frequencies [1 1 2 3 4])(frequencies [4 1 1 2 3]))
evaluates true.
Different order, different number of duplicates:
(= (frequencies [1 1 2 3 4])(frequencies [4 1 2 3]))
evaluates false.
So, you can write a function:
(defn other_fun [& colls]
(apply = (map frequencies colls)))
If you don't care about duplicates, you could create sets from both vectors and compare these:
(= (set [1 2 3]) (set [3 2 1])) ;=> true
As a function:
(defn set= [& vectors] (apply = (map set vectors)))
If you don't care about duplicates, other answers a perfectly applicable and efficient.
But if you do care about duplicates, probably the easiest way to compare two vectors is sorting and comparing:
user=> (= (sort [3 5 2 2]) (sort [2 2 5 3]))
true
user=> (= (sort [3 5 2 2]) (sort [2 5 3]))
false
Create sets from them:
user=> (= (set [1 2 3]) (set [3 2 1]))
true
user=> (defn other_func [col1 col2]
(= (set col1) (set col2)))
#'user/other_func
user=> (other_func [1 2 3] [3 2 1])
true
You're on the JVM already, so if you want containsAll, then just use containsAll, right?
(defn other_fun
"checkes the presence of the elements of vec1 in vec2 and vice versa"
[vec1 vec2]
(if (or (some nil?
(for [a vec1 b [vec2]] (some #(= % a) b)))
(some nil?
(for [a vec2 b [vec1]] (some #(= % a) b))))
false
true))
(other_fun [1 2 3] [3 2 1]) ;=> true
(other_fun [1 2 3 4] [3 2 1]) ;=> false
In Clojure, I want to combine two lists to give a list of pairs,
> (zip '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6))
((1 4) (2 5) (3 6))
In Haskell or Ruby the function is called zip. Implementing it is not difficult, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a function in Core or Contrib.
There is a zip namespace in Core, but it is described as providing access to the Zipper functional technique, which does not appear to be what I am after.
Is there an equivalent function for combining 2 or more lists, in this way, in Core?
If there is not, is it because there is an idiomatic approach that renders the function unneeded?
(map vector '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6))
does what you want:
=> ([1 4] [2 5] [3 6])
Haskell needs a collection of zipWith (zipWith3, zipWith4, ...) functions, because they all need to be of a specific type; in particular, the number of input lists they accept needs to be fixed. (The zip, zip2, zip3, ... family can be regarded as a specialisation of the zipWith family for the common use case of tupling).
In contrast, Clojure and other Lisps have good support for variable arity functions; map is one of them and can be used for "tupling" in a manner similar to Haskell's
zipWith (\x y -> (x, y))
The idiomatic way to build a "tuple" in Clojure is to construct a short vector, as displayed above.
(Just for completeness, note that Haskell with some basic extensions does allow variable arity functions; using them requires a good understanding of the language, though, and the vanilla Haskell 98 probably doesn't support them at all, thus fixed arity functions are preferrable for the standard library.)
(partition 2 (interleave '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6)))
=> ((1 4) (2 5) (3 6))
or more generally
(defn zip [& colls]
(partition (count colls) (apply interleave colls)))
(zip '( 1 2 3) '(4 5 6)) ;=> ((1 4) (2 5) (3 6))
(zip '( 1 2 3) '(4 5 6) '(2 4 8)) ;=> ((1 4 2) (2 5 4) (3 6 8))
(map vector [1 2 3] [4 5 6])
to give you exactly what you wanted, mapping list across the two lists will give you a list of lists like in your example. I think that many Clojurians would tend to use vectors for this though it will work with anything. and the inputs do not need to be the same type. map creates seqs from them and then maps the seqs so any seq'able input will work fine.
(map list '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6))
(map list [1 2 3] '(4 5 6))
(map hash-map '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6))
(map hash-set '(1 2 3) '(4 5 6))
The built-in way would simply be the function 'interleave':
(interleave [1 2 3 4] [5 6 7 8]) => [1 5 2 6 3 7 4 8]
There is a function called zipmap, that may have the similar effect,
(zipmap (1 2 3)(4 5 6))
The ouput is as fllows:
{3 6, 2 5, 1 4}
#(apply map list %) transposes a matrix just like the Python zip* function. As a macro definition:
user=> (defmacro py-zip [lst] `(apply map list ~lst))
#'user/py-zip
user=> (py-zip '((1 2 3 4) (9 9 9 9) (5 6 7 8)))
((1 9 5) (2 9 6) (3 9 7) (4 9 8))
user=> (py-zip '((1 9 5) (2 9 6) (3 9 7) (4 9 8)))
((1 2 3 4) (9 9 9 9) (5 6 7 8))