Splitting string into groups

Question

I\'m trying to \'group\' a string into segments, I guess this example would explain it more succintly

scala> val str: String = \"aaaabbcddeeeeeeffg\"
...          


        

Answer 1

Starting Scala 2.13, List is now provided with the unfold builder which can be combined with String::span:

List.unfold("aaaabbaaacdeeffg") {
  case ""   => None
  case rest => Some(rest.span(_ == rest.head))
}
// List[String] = List("aaaa", "bb", "aaa", "c", "d", "ee", "ff", "g")

or alternatively, coupled with Scala 2.13's Option#unless builder:

List.unfold("aaaabbaaacdeeffg") {
  rest => Option.unless(rest.isEmpty)(rest.span(_ == rest.head))
}
// List[String] = List("aaaa", "bb", "aaa", "c", "d", "ee", "ff", "g")

---

Details:

• Unfold (def unfold[A, S](init: S)(f: (S) => Option[(A, S)]): List[A]) is based on an internal state (init) which is initialized in our case with "aaaabbaaacdeeffg".
• For each iteration, we span (def span(p: (Char) => Boolean): (String, String)) this internal state in order to find the prefix containing the same symbol and produce a (String, String) tuple which contains the prefix and the rest of the string. span is very fortunate in this context as it produces exactly what unfold expects: a tuple containing the next element of the list and the new internal state.
• The unfolding stops when the internal state is "" in which case we produce None as expected by unfold to exit.