FlatMapper (original) (raw)

Tim Peierls tim at peierls.net
Thu Feb 21 09:39:27 PST 2013

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:18 PM, Joe Bowbeer <joe.bowbeer at gmail.com> wrote:

Is mapInto more easily confused with other names such as 'collect'? No, I don't think so.

As Kevin pointed out, there's not enough new going on here to deserve a fancy new (scary) name. We're taking a stream of T values and mapping each one to zero or more U instances and putting them into a U consumer. In the general case, it's not really flattening (or exploding), even though what I would describe in those terms is a special case of this.

FlatMapper is a synecdoche, a more specific term standing in for a more general concept, and if it makes Scala devotees happy, then I guess it does no harm. But (and I know it must seem like I'm reversing myself, since I suggested "flattenInto") I don't see a need to repeat the favor in the method name.

--tim

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