Scala insert into list at specific locations - list

Question

This is the problem that I did solve, however being a total imperative Scala noob, I feel I found something totally not elegant. Any ideas of improvement appreciated.
val l1 = 4 :: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: Nil // original list
val insert = List(88,99) // list I want to insert on certain places
// method that finds all indexes of a particular element in a particular list
def indexesOf(element:Any, inList:List[Any]) = {
var indexes = List[Int]()
for(i <- 0 until inList.length) {
if(inList(i) == element) indexes = indexes :+ i
}
indexes
}
var indexes = indexesOf(4, l1) // get indexes where 4 appears in the original list
println(indexes)
var result = List[Any]()
// iterate through indexes and insert in front
for(i <- 0 until indexes.length) {
var prev = if(i == 0) 0 else indexes(i-1)
result = result ::: l1.slice(prev, indexes(i)) ::: insert
}
result = result ::: l1.drop(indexes.last) // append the last bit from original list
println(result)
I was thinking more elegant solution would be achievable with something like this, but that's just pure speculation.
var final:List[Any] = (0 /: indexes) {(final, i) => final ::: ins ::: l1.slice(i, indexes(i))

Answer 1

def insert[A](xs: List[A], extra: List[A])(p: A => Boolean) = {
xs.map(x => if (p(x)) extra ::: List(x) else List(x)).flatten
}
scala> insert(List(4,1,2,3,4),List(88,99)){_ == 4}
res3: List[Int] = List(88, 99, 4, 1, 2, 3, 88, 99, 4)
Edit: explanation added.
Our goal here is to insert a list (called extra) in front of selected elements in another list (here called xs--commonly used for lists, as if one thing is x then lots of them must be the plural xs). We want this to work on any type of list we might have, so we annotate it with the generic type [A].
Which elements are candidates for insertion? When writing the function, we don't know, so we provide a function that says true or false for each element (p: A => Boolean).
Now, for each element in the list x, we check--should we make the insertion (i.e. is p(x) true)? If yes, we just build it: extra ::: List(x) is just the elements of extra followed by the single item x. (It might be better to write this as extra :+ x--add the single item at the end.) If no, we have only the single item, but we make it List(x) instead of just x because we want everything to have the same type. So now, if we have something like
4 1 2 3 4
and our condition is that we insert 5 6 before 4, we generate
List(5 6 4) List(1) List(2) List(3) List(5 6 4)
This is exactly what we want, except we have a list of lists. To get rid of the inner lists and flatten everything into a single list, we just call flatten.

Answer 2

The flatten trick is cute, I wouldn't have thought of using map here myself. From my perspective this problem is a typical application for a fold, as you want go through the list and "collect" something (the result list). As we don't want our result list backwards, foldRight (a.k.a. :\) is here the right version:
def insert[A](xs: List[A], extra: List[A])(p: A => Boolean) =
xs.foldRight(List[A]())((x,xs) => if (p(x)) extra ::: (x :: xs) else x :: xs)

Answer 3

Here's another possibility, using Seq#patch to handle the actual inserts. You need to foldRight so that later indices are handled first (inserts modify the indices of all elements after the insert, so it would be tricky otherwise).
def insert[A](xs: Seq[A], ys: Seq[A])(pred: A => Boolean) = {
val positions = xs.zipWithIndex filter(x => pred(x._1)) map(_._2)
positions.foldRight(xs) { (pos, xs) => xs patch (pos, ys, 0) }
}