How do I write a generic memoize function?

Question

I\'m writing a function to find triangle numbers and the natural way to write it is recursively:

function triangle (x)
   if x == 0 then return 0 end
   retu         


        

Answer 1

I've been inspired by this question to implement (yet another) flexible memoize function in Lua.

https://github.com/kikito/memoize.lua

Main advantages:

• Accepts a variable number of arguments
• Doesn't use tostring; instead, it organizes the cache in a tree structure, using the parameters to traverse it.
• Works just fine with functions that return multiple values.

Pasting the code here as reference:

local globalCache = {}

local function getFromCache(cache, args)
  local node = cache
  for i=1, #args do
    if not node.children then return {} end
    node = node.children[args[i]]
    if not node then return {} end
  end
  return node.results
end

local function insertInCache(cache, args, results)
  local arg
  local node = cache
  for i=1, #args do
    arg = args[i]
    node.children = node.children or {}
    node.children[arg] = node.children[arg] or {}
    node = node.children[arg]
  end
  node.results = results
end


-- public function

local function memoize(f)
  globalCache[f] = { results = {} }
  return function (...)
    local results = getFromCache( globalCache[f], {...} )

    if #results == 0 then
      results = { f(...) }
      insertInCache(globalCache[f], {...}, results)
    end

    return unpack(results)
  end
end

return memoize