flatMap (original) (raw)

Brian Goetz brian.goetz at oracle.com
Mon Dec 17 19🔞08 PST 2012

So, of the names suggested here so far for flatMap, my favorite is the one inspired by Don -- mapMulti. It still sounds like map, is pretty clear what it's about (multi-valued map), and it steers clear of a lot of other pitfalls.

While the bikeshed paint is still wet, we can talk about the API. Here's an improved proposal. This may not be perfect, but it's definitely better than what we have now.

interface DownstreamContext /* placeholder name */ { void yield(T element); void yield(T[] array); void yield(Collection collection); void yield(Stream stream); // can add more }

interface Multimapper<T,U> /* placeholder name */ { void map(DownstreamContext downstream, T element); }

interface Stream { ... Stream mapMulti(Multimapper<T,U> mapper); ... }

This handles the "generator" case that the current API is built around, but also handles the other cases well too:

Example 1 -- collection.

foos.mapMulti((downstream, foo) -> downstream.yield(getBars(foo)))...

Example 2 -- generator.

ints.mapMulti((d, i) -> { for (int j=0; j<i; j++) d.yield(j); })

Example 3 -- stream.

kids.mapMulti( (d, k) -> d.yield(adults.stream().filter(a -> isParent(a, f))));

The downstream context argument is still annoying, but I think is clearer than the current "sink" argument is. The alternative would be to have N special-purpose functional interfaces and N overloads for the non-generator cases (stream, collection) in addition to the current generator form.

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