Improve this clojure code: depth-first search algorithm - clojure

Context
As an exercise for myself (I'm learning clojure). I wanted to implement the Depth-first search algorithm.
How I did it
Using recursion
(def graph
{:s {:a 3 :d 4}
:a {:s 3 :d 5 :b 4}
:b {:a 4 :e 5 :c 4}
:c {:b 4}
:d {:s 4 :a 5 :e 2}
:e {:d 2 :b 5 :f 4}
:f {:e 4 :g 1}})
(def stack [[:s]])
(def goal :g)
(defn cost [Graph start goal]
(goal (start Graph)))
(defn hasloop? [path]
(not (= (count path) (count (set path)))))
(defn atgoal? [path]
(= goal (last path)))
(defn solved? [stack]
(some true? (map atgoal? stack)))
(defn addtopath [path node]
(conj path node))
(defn pop* [stack]
(last stack))
(defn findpath [stack]
(if (not (solved? stack))
(let [first* (pop* stack) l (last first*) ]
(findpath (drop-last
(remove hasloop? (lazy-cat
(map #(addtopath first* %)
(keys (l graph))) stack)))))
[(first stack)]))
How to use
(findpath stack)
Question
I'm really really interested in how this code can be improved. Both in readability, efficiency and performance.

Do not use lazy-cat, your seq is realized if you do drop-last on it.
Recursion in Clojure should be done using loop/recur to avoid stack overflows.
Do not put several lets on a single line:
(let [first* (pop* stack)
l (last first*)]
Use (if-not instead of (if (not. Same for (not=
Use lower-case var names (graph, not Graph). Keep capitalization to classes, records and protocols.

Related

How do I exit a Clojure walk postwalk on a nested maps on the first true predicate match?

I am using clojure.walk/postwalk to compare a predicate to every map in a nested collection and want to exit with true on the first true. How would I do that? I am ok with it walking the whole data structure and then returning true if there is a true match.
As a corollary question, I guess the same question could apply to when one performs a map as opposed to a postwalk.
UPDATE: this was truly a tired/lazy question; I should have provided a code example. That said, I'm leaving it up in case anyone is currently formulating an answer to my half-baked question. The only thing that is worse than asking one is taking it down after someone has been kind enough to start helping. I will be quite content if no one answers, if they request a better question, or if they just give me suggestions of what to research.
a bit different way to do it, also employing tree-seq:
(defn find-deep [pred data not-found]
(->> data
(tree-seq coll? seq)
(some #(when (pred %) [%]))
((fnil first [not-found]))))
user> (find-deep #(= (:c %) 30) [{:a 10 :b [{:c 20 :d {:c 30}}]}] ::none)
;;=> {:c 30}
user> (find-deep #(= (:c %) 40) [{:a 10 :b [{:c 20 :d {:c 30}}]}] ::none)
;;=> :user/none
You may be interested in this function I call walk-seq. It returns a lazy depth-first sequence over a data structure which you can then seek against to find the first match. I find it to be preferable here because it doesn't require callbacks and exceptions to exit early like clojure.walk/postwalk would.
(defn walk-seq
"Returns a lazy depth-first sequence of all forms within a data structure."
[form]
(tree-seq coll? seq form))
(defn seek
"Find the first element in the collection that matches pred,
else returns not-found. Note that using seek can lead to
poor performance and you should always use indexed data
structures instead of multiple seeks over the same data."
([pred coll]
(seek pred coll nil))
([pred coll not-found]
(reduce (fn [nf x] (if (pred x) (reduced x) nf)) not-found coll)))
Usage of walk-seq:
(walk-seq {:a [{:b -1} {:b 1}] :b 2})
=>
({:a [{:b -1} {:b 1}], :b 2}
[:a [{:b -1} {:b 1}]]
:a
[{:b -1} {:b 1}]
{:b -1}
[:b -1]
:b
-1
{:b 1}
[:b 1]
:b
1
[:b 2]
:b
2)
Combining the two:
(seek (every-pred number? pos?) (walk-seq {:a [{:b -1} {:b 1}] :b 2}))
=>
1
It can be done using postwalk by throwing an exception once the predicate is true as I suggested in the comment. This approach is unconventional but concise and lets us reuse the logic of postwalk for walking the datastructure:
(defn walk-some [pred data]
(try
(clojure.walk/postwalk
#(if (pred %)
(throw (ex-info "Found" {:data %}))
%)
data)
false
(catch clojure.lang.ExceptionInfo e
true)))
(walk-some #(and (number? %) (odd? %)) {:a [[9] 3]})
;; => true
(walk-some #(and (number? %) (even? %)) {:a [[9] 3]})
;; => false
Using exceptions for control flow is rarely needed but occasionally it useful to deviate a bit from convention. You may want to define a custom exception type for improved robustness in case your predicate can throw objects of type ExceptionInfo.

How to merge maps and get a map of lists?

Let's say we a list of maps. Maps all have the same keywords, but we don't know the keywords beforehand.
[{:a 1 :b 2} {:a 3 :b 4}]
And what would be the idiomatic way of merging this list into such a map:
{:a [1 3]
:b [2 4]}
Doesn't seem hard, however as I start to implement the function, it gets super ugly and repetitive. I have a feeling that there are much cleaner ways of achieving this.
Thank you
You can actually get a pretty elegant solution by using several functions from the standard library:
(defn consolidate [& ms]
(apply merge-with conj (zipmap (mapcat keys ms) (repeat [])) ms))
Example:
(consolidate {:a 1 :b 2} {:a 3 :b 4})
;=> {:a [1 3], :b [2 4]}
One cool thing about this solution is that it works even if the maps have different key sets.
i would rather use double reduction to "merge" them with update:
(defn merge-maps-with-vec [maps]
(reduce (partial reduce-kv #(update %1 %2 (fnil conj []) %3))
{} maps))
user> (merge-maps-with-vec [{:a 1 :b 2} {:a 3 :b 4 :c 10}])
{:a [1 3], :b [2 4], :c [10]}
It is not as expressive as #Sam Estep's answer, but on the other hand it doesn't generate any intermediate sequences (like every-key-to-empty-vector map which also needs one extra pass through every entry of every map). Of course, premature optimizations are bad in general, but it won't hurt here i guess. Though the reduce based solution looks a bit more obscure, but being put into a library with proper docs it would not look as obscure to the end user (or to yourself a year after)
While many solutions are possible, here is one that uses some of the convenience functions in the Tupelo library:
(ns clj.core
(:use tupelo.core)
(:require [tupelo.schema :as ts]
[schema.core :as s] ))
(s/defn gather-keys
[list-of-maps :- [ts/KeyMap]]
(newline)
(let [keys-vec (keys (first list-of-maps))]
(s/validate [s/Keyword] keys-vec) ; verify it is a vector of keywords
(apply glue
(for [curr-key keys-vec]
{curr-key (forv [curr-map list-of-maps]
(get curr-map curr-key))} ))))
(deftest t-maps
(spyx
(gather-keys [{:a 1 :b 2}
{:a 3 :b 4} ] )))
(gather-keys [{:a 1, :b 2} {:a 3, :b 4}]) ;=> {:a [1 3], :b [2 4]}
Note that this solution assumes that each input map has an identical set of keys. Normally I'd want to enforce that assumption with a sanity check in the code as well.
Looking at the answer from Sam, I would rewrite it with some temporary variables to help document the sub-steps:
(defn consolidate-keys [list-of-maps]
(let [keys-set (set (mapcat keys list-of-maps))
base-result (zipmap keys-set (repeat [] )) ]
(apply merge-with conj base-result list-of-maps)))
(consolidate-keys [ {:a 1 :b 2}
{:a 3 :z 9} ] )
;=> {:z [9], :b [2], :a [1 3]}

Clojure: Why is flatten "the wrong thing to use"

I've read this kind of thing a couple of times since I've started Clojure.
For instance, here: How to convert map to a sequence?
And in some tweet I don't remember exactly that was more or less saying "if you're using flatten you're probably doing it wrong".
I would like to know, what is wrong with flatten?
I think this is what they were talking about in the answer you linked:
so> ((comp flatten seq) {:a [1 2] :b [3 4]})
(:b 3 4 :a 1 2)
so> (apply concat {:a [1 2] :b [3 4]})
(:b [3 4] :a [1 2])
Flatten will remove the structure from the keys and values, which is probably not what you want. There are use cases where you do want to remove the structure of nested sequences, and flatten was written for such cases. But for destructuring a map, you usually do want to keep the internal sequences as is.
Anything flatten can't flatten, it ought to return intact. At the top level, it doesn't.
(flatten 8)
()
(flatten {1 2, 3 4})
()
If you think you've supplied a sequence, but you haven't, you'll get the effect of supplying an empty sequence. This is the sort of leg-breaker that most core functions take care to preclude. For example, (str nil) => "".
flatten ought to work like this:
(defn flatten [x]
(if (sequential? x)
((fn flat [y] (if (sequential? y) (mapcat flat y) [y])) x)
x))
(flatten 8)
;8
(flatten [{1 2, 3 4}])
;({1 2, 3 4})
(flatten [1 [2 [[3]] 4]])
;(1 2 3 4)
You can find Steve Miner's faster lazy version of this here.
Probability of "probably"
Listen to people who say "you're probably doing it wrong", but also do not forget they say "probably", because it all depends on the problem.
For example if your task is to flatten the map where you could care less what was the key what was the value, you just need an unstructured sequence of all, then by all means, use flatten (or apply concat).
The reason it causes a "suspicion" is the fact that you had / were given a map to begin with, hence whoever gave it to you meant a "key value" paired structure, and if you flatten it, you lose that intention, as well as flexibility and clarity.
Keep in mind
In case you are still not sure what to do with a map for you particular problem, have a for comprehension in mind, since you would have a full control on what to do with the map as you iterate of it:
create a vector?
;; can also be (apply vector {:a 34 :b 42}), but just to use "for" for all consistently
user=> (into [] (for [[k v] {:a 34 :b 42}] [k v]))
[[:a 34] [:b 42]]
create another map?
user=> (into {} (for [[k v] {:a 34 :b 42}] [k (inc v)]))
{:a 35, :b 43}
create a set?
user=> (into #{} (for [[k v] {:a 34 :b 42}] [k v]))
#{[:a 34] [:b 42]}
reverse keys and values?
user=> (into {} (for [[k v] {:a 34 :b 42}] [v k]))
{34 :a, 42 :b}

clojure: create a lazy-seq containing another lazy-seq

I would like to create a lazy-seq containing another lazy-seq using clojure.
The data structure that I aready have is a lazy-seq of map and it looks like this:
({:a 1 :b 1})
Now I would like to put that lazy-seq into another one so that the result would be a lazy-seq of a lazy-seq of map:
(({:a 1 :b 1}))
Does anyone know how to do this? Any help would be appreciated
Regards,
Here is an example of creating a list containing a list of maps:
=> (list (list {:a 1 :b 1}))
(({:a 1, :b 1}))
It's not lazy, but you can make both lists lazy with lazy-seq macro:
=> (lazy-seq (list (lazy-seq (list {:a 1 :b 1}))))
or the same code with -> macro:
=> (-> {:a 1 :b 1} list lazy-seq list lazy-seq)
Actually, if you'll replace lists here with vectors you'll get the same result:
=> (lazy-seq [(lazy-seq [{:a 1 :b 1}])])
(({:a 1, :b 1}))
I'm not sure what you're trying to do and why do you want both lists to be lazy. So, provide better explanation if you want further help.
generally, there's nothing special about having a lazy-seq containing many lazy-seq's, so i dont understand exactly what it is you are really after.
you could always do
(map list '({:a 1 :b 1})) ;; gives (({:a 1, :b 1}))
we can even verify that it maintains laziness:
(def a
(concat
(take 5 (repeat {:a 1 :b 2}))
(lazy-seq
(throw (Exception. "too eager")))))
(println (take 5 (map list a))) ;; works fine
(println (take 6 (map list a))) ;; throws an exception

how to traverse / walk an arbitrary embedded structure

I want a mechanism to traverse an arbitrarily nested data structure. Then apply a fn on every node, and then check if the fn returned true at each point.
Its easy to do this with a flat structure -
(walk (complement string?) #(every? true? %) [ 1 2 3 4])
However walk doesnt work with a nested one -
(walk (complement string?) #(every? true? %) [ 1 2 3 [ "a" ]])
Using only flatten also wont work, as I will have a map as one of the forms, and I want fn applied to each value in the map too. This is the structure I will have -
[ ["2012" [{:a 2} {:b 3}]] ["2013" [{:a 2} {:b 3}]] ]
I can easily write a fn to only traverse the above and apply the fn to each val. However is there a way to write a generic mechanism for traversing?
tree-seq might be what you want
(every? (complement string?)
(remove coll?
(tree-seq coll? #(if (map? %)
(vals %)
%)
[["2012" [{:a 2} {:b 3}]] ["2013" [{:a 2} {:b 3}]]])))
;; false
(every? (complement string?)
(remove coll?
(tree-seq coll? #(if (map? %)
(vals %)
%)
[[2012 [{:a 2} {:b 3}]] [2013 [{:a 2} {:b 3}]]])))
;; true