List comprehension in Ruby

Question

To do the equivalent of Python list comprehensions, I\'m doing the following:

some_array.select{|x| x % 2 == 0 }.collect{|x| x * 3}

Is ther

Answer 1

I discussed this topic with Rein Henrichs, who tells me that the best performing solution is

map { ... }.compact

This makes good sense because it avoids building intermediate Arrays as with the immutable usage of Enumerable#inject, and it avoids growing the Array, which causes allocation. It's as general as any of the others unless your collection can contain nil elements.

I haven't compared this with

select {...}.map{...}

It's possible that Ruby's C implementation of Enumerable#select is also very good.

Answer 2

Something like this:

def lazy(collection, &blk)
   collection.map{|x| blk.call(x)}.compact
end

Call it:

lazy (1..6){|x| x * 3 if x.even?}

Which returns:

=> [6, 12, 18]

Answer 3

There seems to be some confusion amongst Ruby programmers in this thread concerning what list comprehension is. Every single response assumes some preexisting array to transform. But list comprehension's power lies in an array created on the fly with the following syntax:

squares = [x**2 for x in range(10)]

The following would be an analog in Ruby (the only adequate answer in this thread, AFAIC):

a = Array.new(4).map{rand(2**49..2**50)} 

In the above case, I'm creating an array of random integers, but the block could contain anything. But this would be a Ruby list comprehension.

Answer 4

I made a quick benchmark comparing the three alternatives and map-compact really seems to be the best option.

Performance test (Rails)

require 'test_helper'
require 'performance_test_help'

class ListComprehensionTest < ActionController::PerformanceTest

  TEST_ARRAY = (1..100).to_a

  def test_map_compact
    1000.times do
      TEST_ARRAY.map{|x| x % 2 == 0 ? x * 3 : nil}.compact
    end
  end

  def test_select_map
    1000.times do
      TEST_ARRAY.select{|x| x % 2 == 0 }.map{|x| x * 3}
    end
  end

  def test_inject
    1000.times do
      TEST_ARRAY.inject([]) {|all, x| all << x*3 if x % 2 == 0; all }
    end
  end

end

Results

/usr/bin/ruby1.8 -I"lib:test" "/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake/rake_test_loader.rb" "test/performance/list_comprehension_test.rb" -- --benchmark
Loaded suite /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake/rake_test_loader
Started
ListComprehensionTest#test_inject (1230 ms warmup)
           wall_time: 1221 ms
              memory: 0.00 KB
             objects: 0
             gc_runs: 0
             gc_time: 0 ms
.ListComprehensionTest#test_map_compact (860 ms warmup)
           wall_time: 855 ms
              memory: 0.00 KB
             objects: 0
             gc_runs: 0
             gc_time: 0 ms
.ListComprehensionTest#test_select_map (961 ms warmup)
           wall_time: 955 ms
              memory: 0.00 KB
             objects: 0
             gc_runs: 0
             gc_time: 0 ms
.
Finished in 66.683039 seconds.

15 tests, 0 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors

Answer 5

This is one way to approach this:

c = -> x do $*.clear             
  if x['if'] && x[0] != 'f' .  
    y = x[0...x.index('for')]    
    x = x[x.index('for')..-1]
    (x.insert(x.index(x.split[3]) + x.split[3].length, " do $* << #{y}")
    x.insert(x.length, "end; $*")
    eval(x)
    $*)
  elsif x['if'] && x[0] == 'f'
    (x.insert(x.index(x.split[3]) + x.split[3].length, " do $* << x")
    x.insert(x.length, "end; $*")
    eval(x)
    $*)
  elsif !x['if'] && x[0] != 'f'
    y = x[0...x.index('for')]
    x = x[x.index('for')..-1]
    (x.insert(x.index(x.split[3]) + x.split[3].length, " do $* << #{y}")
    x.insert(x.length, "end; $*")
    eval(x)
    $*)
  else
    eval(x.split[3]).to_a
  end
end 

so basically we are converting a string to proper ruby syntax for loop then we can use python syntax in a string to do:

c['for x in 1..10']
c['for x in 1..10 if x.even?']
c['x**2 for x in 1..10 if x.even?']
c['x**2 for x in 1..10']

# [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
# [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
# [4, 16, 36, 64, 100]
# [1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100]

or if you don't like the way the string looks or having to use a lambda we could forego the attempt to mirror python syntax and do something like this:

S = [for x in 0...9 do $* << x*2 if x.even? end, $*][1]
# [0, 4, 8, 12, 16]

Answer 6

Ruby 2.7 introduced filter_map which pretty much achieves what you want (map + compact):

some_array.filter_map { |x| x * 3 if x % 2 == 0 }

You can read more about it here.