iterator.erl

Lazy sequences simulating stdlib lists module API

This library provides an interface to define your own "lazy sequences" and also provides a list of helpers to operate on such sequences that mimicks the OTP stdlib lists functions. "lazy sequences" allows you to operate on potentially huge streams of data the same way you would operate on them if they are completely loaded into memory as a very long list, but doing so only using constant memory footprint. It achieves that by loading one-list-item at a time.

Usage example

It's primary intention is that you could define your own "iterators" using our generic interface and then use our helper functions to build the "processing" pipeline for the stream of data.

For example, let's implement an iterator that returns next line from a file each time:

file_line_iterator(FileName) ->
    {ok, Fd} = file:open(Filename, [read, read_ahead, raw]),
    iterator:new(fun yield_file_line/1, Fd, fun close_file/1).

yield_file_line(Fd) ->
    case file:read_line(Fd) of
        {ok, Line} ->
            {Line, Fd};
        eof ->
            done;
        {error, Reason} ->
            error(Reason)
    end.

close_file(Fd) ->
    file:close(Fd).

You use iterator:new/3 to create the (opaque) iterator structure, where

• 1st argument is the "yield" function - the function that returns either {NextSequenceElement, NewState} or atom done when sequence is exhausted
• 2nd argument is the initial state of the iterator (in this example it does not change)
• 3rd optional argument is the "close" garbage-collection function that will be called when iterator is exhausted or discarded (eg, used with iterator:takewhile/2)

After that you can use the primitive iterator:next/1 function that returns either {ok, NextElement, NewIterator} or done. But the real power comes when you build a "processing pipeline" instead.

Then we may build a "processing pipeline" for this iterator. Let's say we want to filter-out the lines that match a regular expression:

LinesIterator = file_line_iterator("my_file.txt"),
MatchingIterator =
    iterator:filter(
        fun(Line) ->
            case re:run(Line, "^[0-9]+$") of
                nomatch ->
                    false;
                {match, _} ->
                    true
            end
        end, LinesIterator).

And then we want to convert each matching line to integer

IntegerIterator = iterator:map(fun erlang:binary_to_integer/1, MatchingIterator).

And finally we want to sum all the integers

Sum = iterator:fold(fun(Int, Acc) -> Int + Acc end, 0, IntegerIterator).

The iterator:fold/2 is different from other pipeline functions because it does not return the new iterator, but it "forces" the execution of iterator by reading inner iterator's elements one-by-one and applying fun to them, maintaining the Acc state. Another such functions are iterator:to_list/1, iterator:search/2, iterator:foreach/2.

With this code, using iterator, we managed to go through the whole file never keeping more than a single line in-memory but were able to work with it using the same code style and high-order functions as what we would use if we read all the file lines in memory.

Full list of helper functions see in the iterator.erl. But the naming is the same as in the OTP lists module.

Functions iterator_pmap:pmap/2 and iterator_pmap:pmap/3 provide parallel version of iterator:map/2: it takes iterator as input and returns a new iterator where map function is executed for each input element in parallel on a pool of worker processes. The ordered parameter controls if the parallel map should preserve the order of the original iterator or it is allowed to reshuffle the elements (so it outputs elements which are processed faster - earlier, increasing the throughput).

Another non-standard function is pv/3 (from man pv - "pipe view"). A pass-through iterator that can be added somewhere in the pipeline to periodically (either every for_each_n elements or every every_s seconds) report the current progress of a long-running iterator:

I0 = ...,
I1 = iterator:pv(
  fun(SampleElement, TimePassed, ItemsPassed, TotalItems) ->
    TimeS = erlang:convert_time_unit(TimePassed, native, second),
    ?LOG_INFO("Processed ~p items. Pace is ~p per-second. Current item: ~p",
              [TotalItems, ItemsPassed / TimeS, SampleElement])
  end,
  #{for_each_n => 1000,
    every_s => 30},
  I0),
...

This example will log current progress either every 30 seconds or after processing every 1000 elements (whichever triggers first).

Setup

Add it to your rebar.config

{deps, [iterator]}.

Release History

See our changelog.

License

Copyright © 2023 Klarna Bank AB

For license details, see the LICENSE file in the root of this project.