aster.cloud aster.cloud
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
  • Tools
  • About
aster.cloud aster.cloud
  • /
  • Platforms
    • Public Cloud
    • On-Premise
    • Hybrid Cloud
    • Data
  • Architecture
    • Design
    • Solutions
    • Enterprise
  • Engineering
    • Automation
    • Software Engineering
    • Project Management
    • DevOps
  • Programming
  • Tools
  • About
  • Programming

Announcing Swift Algorithms

  • relay
  • October 8, 2020
  • 3 minute read

I’m excited to announce Swift Algorithms, a new open-source package of sequence and collection algorithms, along with their related types.

Algorithms are powerful tools for thought because they encapsulate difficult-to-read and error-prone raw loops. The Algorithms package includes a host of powerful, generic algorithms frequently found in other popular programming languages. We hope this new package will help people embrace algorithms, improving the correctness and performance of their code.

 

A Brief Tour

With the Algorithms package’s initial set of sequence and collection operations, you can cycle over a collection’s elements, find combinations and permutations, create a random sample, and more.

One inclusion is a pair of chunked methods, each of which break a collection into consecutive subsequences. One version tests adjacent elements to find the breaking point between chunks — you can use it to quickly separate an array into ascending runs:

<span class="k">let</span> <span class="nv">numbers</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="mi">10</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">20</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">30</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">10</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">40</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">40</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">10</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="mi">20</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="k">let</span> <span class="nv">chunks</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">numbers</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nf">chunked</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">by</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="p">{</span> <span class="nv">$0</span> <span class="o"><=</span> <span class="nv">$1</span> <span class="p">})</span>
<span class="c1">// [[10, 20, 30], [10, 40, 40], [10, 20]]</span>

The other version looks for a change in the transformation of each successive value. You can use that to separate a list of names into groups by the first character:

<span class="k">let</span> <span class="nv">names</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="p">[</span><span class="s">"Cassie"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">"Chloe"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">"Jasmine"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">"Jordan"</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="s">"Taylor"</span><span class="p">]</span>
<span class="k">let</span> <span class="nv">chunks</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">names</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="nf">chunked</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="nv">on</span><span class="p">:</span> <span class="err">\</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">first</span><span class="p">)</span>
<span class="c1">// [["Cassie", "Chloe"], ["Jasmine", "Jordan"], ["Taylor"]] </span>

You can read more about chunked or any of the other components in the Algorithms package in the included guides:

  • Combinations
  • Permutations
  • Product
  • Chunked
  • Chain
  • Cycle
  • Unique
  • Random Sampling
  • Indexed
  • Partition
  • Rotate
Read More  Why is the Swift Language Gaining Popularity? Is it Tailored Swift?

 

Relation to the Swift Standard Library

It’s our ambition for the standard library to include a rich, pragmatic set of generic algorithms. We think the Algorithms package can help realize this goal by serving as a low-friction venue to build out new families of related algorithms—giving us an opportunity to iteratively explore the problem space and learn how different algorithms connect and interact—before graduating them into the standard library.

Packages like Swift Algorithms (and Swift Numerics) complement the Swift Evolution process by providing a means to:

  • Engage the community earlier in the development process
  • Channel contributions towards active areas of focus
  • Solicit feedback informed by real-world usage
  • Coherently tackle large tracts of missing functionality

The Algorithms package is, in part, a response to the lengthy SE-0270 review and follow-up Evolution process discussion. With SE-0270, we faced a tension in providing a proposal small enough to make effective use of the Swift discussion forums, but large enough to motivate and ensure the consistency of the additions. Going forward, we plan to experiment with chopping up families of related algorithms into multiple, smaller Evolution proposals, using the presence of the Algorithms package to provide additional context.

However, just because an addition might be a good candidate for inclusion in the Algorithms package, it doesn’t need to begin its life there. This is not a change to the Swift Evolution process. Well-supported pitches will continue to be considered, as always.

 

Contribution Criteria

The immediate focus of the package is to incubate a pragmatic set of algorithms generalized over the Sequence and Collection family of protocols for eventual inclusion in the Swift standard library—the kind of functionality you might find in the Python itertools module or the C++ algorithms library.

Read More  Kubernetes Version 1.25 – Everything You Should Know

There are many interesting and useful abstractions that don’t meet this criteria. For example:

  • Currency types (e.g. Result) and data structures (e.g. OrderedDictionary)
  • One-off conveniences (e.g. Dictionary.subscript(key:default:)) that don’t generalize over Sequence or Collection
  • Classic algorithms (e.g. quicksort, merge sort, heapsort, insertion sort, etc.) with more pragmatic alternatives
  • Algorithms over non-linear data structures

For any addition to the Algorithms package, an effort should be made to gather use cases and examine the way the topic has been explored in other languages and on other platforms. To evaluate its suitability, we should ask:

  • Does it aid readability?
  • Is it a common operation?
  • Is it consistent with existing abstractions?
  • Does it help avoid a correctness trap?
  • Does it help avoid a performance trap?

… or conversely:

  • Is it trivially composable? (e.g. !isEmpty)
  • Might it encourage misuse?

 

Get Involved!

Your experience, feedback, and contributions are greatly encouraged!

  • Get started by trying out the Swift Algorithms library on GitHub,
  • Discuss the library and get help in the Swift Algorithms forum,
  • Open an issue with problems you find or ideas you have for improvements,
  • And as noted above, pull requests are welcome for fixes or for new algorithms that meet the criteria of the package!

 

Questions?

Please feel free to ask questions about this post in the associated thread on the Swift forums.

By Nate Cook

Source https://swift.org/blog/swift-algorithms/

relay

Related Topics
  • Swift
  • Swift Algorithms
You May Also Like
View Post
  • Automation
  • Programming

Learn Expect By Writing And Automating A Simple Game

  • March 14, 2023
SQL
View Post
  • Data
  • Programming

Infrastructure from Code: the New Wave of Cloud Infrastructure Management

  • February 16, 2023
View Post
  • Programming

Go 1.20 Is Released!

  • February 13, 2023
View Post
  • Computing
  • Programming

Tiny Snippets Of Code That Changed The World

  • January 23, 2023
View Post
  • Computing
  • Programming

How To Migrate Your Code From PHP 7.4 to 8.1

  • December 26, 2022
View Post
  • Programming
  • Software Engineering

10 Tips For Writing Clean Code

  • December 15, 2022
View Post
  • Programming
  • Software
  • Technology

Compose For Wear OS 1.1 Is Now Stable: Check Out New Features!

  • December 12, 2022
View Post
  • Architecture
  • Programming

Introducing The Architecture Templates

  • December 12, 2022

Stay Connected!
LATEST
  • 1
    Monitor Kubernetes Cloud Costs With Open Source Tools
    • March 20, 2023
  • 2
    What Is An Edge-Native Application?
    • March 20, 2023
  • 3
    Eclipse Java Downloads Skyrocket
    • March 19, 2023
  • 4
    How To Use Bash
    • March 17, 2023
  • 5
    Why Is Your Multicloud So Slow?
    • March 17, 2023
  • 6
    The Benefits And Core Processes Of Data Wrangling
    • March 17, 2023
  • 7
    We Cannot Even Agree On Dates…
    • March 16, 2023
  • 8
    Financial Crisis: It’s A Game & We’re All Being Played
    • March 16, 2023
  • 9
    Ballerina: A Programming Language For The Cloud
    • March 16, 2023
  • 10
    Own Your Cloud With NextcloudPi On The Raspberry Pi
    • March 16, 2023
about
Hello World!

We are aster.cloud. We’re created by programmers for programmers.

Our site aims to provide guides, programming tips, reviews, and interesting materials for tech people and those who want to learn in general.

We would like to hear from you.

If you have any feedback, enquiries, or sponsorship request, kindly reach out to us at:

[email protected]
Most Popular
  • 1
    Oxford Quantum Circuits Installing Quantum Computer in Equinix IBX® Data Center With Plans To Open Access to Businesses Globally
    • March 14, 2023
  • 2
    The Adoptium Working Group Reports Significant Momentum for Open Source Java in 2023
    • March 14, 2023
  • 3
    Cloudflare Integrates With Atlassian, Microsoft, And Sumo Logic To Make Zero Trust Security Easy For Businesses
    • March 14, 2023
  • 4
    Cloudflare Uses The Power Of Its Global Network To Identify The Top 50 Most Impersonated Brands And Protect Zero Trust Customers From Phishing Scams
    • March 13, 2023
  • 5
    Open Source Software Leader The Eclipse Foundation Previews Its Showcase At Embedded World 2023
    • March 8, 2023
  • /
  • Platforms
  • Architecture
  • Engineering
  • Programming
  • Tools
  • About

Input your search keywords and press Enter.