This is "Clojure core candies, or Clojure core candidates". Here in this library I collect functions that I wish to be included in clojure.core, or be implemented in a cleaner way that keeps a clear separation between abstraction and concrete types.
In a broader context, this arises from my disagreement with certain "design choices" some people claim to be the rationale behind certain things in Clojure. One of the issues is, some people think we should have different functions for different concrete types ("last" for lists, and "peek" for vectors, for example) so we can avoid using the wrong functions on a type that results in poor performance. On the contrary, I think that approach defeats the purpose of abstraction and makes writing generic code difficult, which is one of major advantages of using a dynamically typed language. Instead, performance should be achieved via clear documentation, programmer's awareness and profiling without any compromise to the abstration itself. Also, what makes the above "design choice" even worse is, Clojure itself is not even consistent with it.
If you are interested, you can read our debate on Google Clojure group:
Let me know if you have suggestions for more functions to be included in this lib. Thanks.
Note 1: the name "core candidates" does not imply any official support from the Clojure team. One of the purposes of this library is for me to get such support from the community.
Note 2: Some people may wonder why I am not happy just to use these functions as they are without being included in the core. Here are the reasons:
- These are very basic functions. If people agree with me that those functions are better than what is already in the core, or filled a gap in the core, then that is the logical place for them.
- If they are in the core, they benefit every one using the language and hence also make the language more successful. I want the language to be successful so it can benefit me.
- If they are in the core, they may be optimized to achieve efficiency not possible otherwise because the implementation may have access to some internal parts. And the better efficiency will benefit every one too.
- Last but not the least, I hope by pushing these changes into the core, a broad consensus will form on the rejection of the design principle mentioned above, which sacrifices abstraction coherence for (doubtfully any) speed gain. That may bring about changes to fix other parts with similar problems.
Note 3: For reasons in Note 2, for now please focus more on the function interface rather than the efficiency. Of course you are welcome to help me improve the efficiency even with the limitation that they are outside of the core.
This is a very simple library. You can just directly copy the single file src/clj_cc/core.clj into the "src" directory of your own project. (a Clojar lib may be available later).
Right now there are only three functions, here are their doc strings:
clj-cc.core/last ([s])
Like the original 'clojure.core/last'. However, it will be much more efficient on vectors and Java arrays, so we don't need to choose between 'last' and 'peek'.
clj-cc.core/append ([coll & more]) Append collections in 'more' into 'coll', and returns the new collection in the same concreate type as 'coll'.
Examples:
(append [1 2] '(3 4)) => [1 2 3 4]
(append '(1 2) [3 4] '(5 6)) => (1 2 3 4 5 6)
Compared to 'into':
(into [1 2] '(3 4)) => [1 2 3 4]
(into '(1 2) [3 4]) => (4 3 1 2) ;; order messed up!
(into '(1 2) [3 4] '(5 6)) => clojure.lang.ArityException
clj-cc.core/slice ([seq start] [seq start end])
Like the original 'clojure.core/subvec'. However, it works on any 'clojure.lang.Seqable' types, and returns the sliced sequence in the same concrete type as the input 'seq'.
Examples:
(slice [1 2 3 5 6] 1 3) => [2 3]
(slice '(1 2 3 5 6) 1 3) => (2 3)
(slice '(1 2 3 5 6) 1) => (2 3 5 6)
Copyright © 2012 Distributed under the Eclipse Public License, the same as Clojure.
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