Is there a native grouping function that works like the sortWith function?

Question

There are a few libraries such as Spark and other Scala extensions that have the \"groupWith\" function available. This function allows you to compare an element to the rest

Answer 1

Here's an implementation:

// Takes the list as a parameter, can use pimp-my-library if you want
def groupWith[A](xs: List[A], f: (A, A) => Boolean) = {
  // helper function to add "e" to any list with a member that matches the predicate
  // otherwise add it to a list of its own
  def addtoGroup(gs: List[List[A]], e: A): List[List[A]] = {
    val (before, after) = gs.span(_.exists(!f(_, e)))
    if (after.isEmpty)
      List(e) :: gs
    else
      before ::: (e :: after.head) :: after.tail
  }
  // now a simple foldLeft adding each element to the appropriate list
  xs.foldLeft(Nil: List[List[A]])(addtoGroup)
} 

groupWith(list, { (e: Item, c: Item) =>
                    (e.num - 1 == c.num || e.num + 1 == c.num) && e.color == c.color})

//| res0: List[List[groups.groups.Item]] =
//         List(List(Item(16,red)),
//              List(Item(15 ,blue)), 
//              List(Item(14,red), Item(13,red)))