4.6.1: Using foreach to Loop Over More Than One Array

Zipping lists is to take some lists A, B, C .. and produce a new list containing the elements (a1, b1, c1..), (a2, b2, c2, ..) .. A key decision here is does the new list stop producing new items once the shortest list is exhausted, or does it continue to produce elements until the longest list is finished, and fill in nil values for the shorter lists.

type stop int

const (
    StopAtMin stop = iota
    StopAtMax
)

type eacharray struct {
    itrs   []i.Forward
    err    error
    stopAt stop
}

func EachArray(stopAt stop, itrs ...i.Forward) i.Forward {
    return &eacharray{itrs: itrs, stopAt: stopAt, err: nil}
}

The constructor takes an enum to control the behaviour vis-a-vis the length of individual streams, and a list of iterators.

func (i *eacharray) Value() interface{} {
    ret := make([]interface{}, len(i.itrs))
    for idx, itr := range i.itrs {
        if !itr.AtEnd() {
            ret[idx] = itr.Value()
        } else {
            ret[idx] = nil
        }
    }
    return ret
}

func (i *eacharray) Error() error {
    return i.err
}

func ( *eacharray) SetError(err error) {
    i.err = err
}

The Value() function loops over all iterators, collecting a value from each of them. If the iterator is at end, we use a nil value for that iterator.

func (i *eacharray) Next() error {
    for _, itr := range i.itrs {
        if !itr.AtEnd() {
            err := itr.Next()
            if err != nil {
                i.err = err
                break
            }
        }
    }
    return i.err
}

func (i *eacharray) AtEnd() bool {
    atEndCount := 0
    for _, itr := range i.itrs {
        if itr.AtEnd() {
            if i.stopAt == StopAtMin {
                return true
            }
            atEndCount++
        }
    }
    return atEndCount == len(i.itrs)
}

The Next() method loops over all iterators, calling Next() on each iterator that is not at end yet. The AtEnd() method loops over all the iterator and checks each one for EOS. If stopAt is StopAtMin, we return true on first EOS we encoundter, otherwise we return false until all iterators return EOS.

itr := EachArray(
    StopAtMax,
    i.List(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6),
    i.List(6.4, 7.1, 8.2, 9.9),
    i.List("A", "B", "C", "D", "E"))

for ; !itr.AtEnd(); itr.Next() {
    fmt.Println(itr.Value())
}

Usage is simple and there is no need for all the lists to be of the same type.

Get the source at GitHub. It is also available in the iterator library as Zip.