How do I make a HashSet from an iterator of chars? - rust

I'm just starting to learn Rust and I'm still working on understanding its approach. The particular thing I'm working on is trying to find out if two strings have any characters in common. In another language I might do this by creating two sets of the characters in the strings and performing an intersection on the sets. So far I'm having no luck in creating a HashSet from the characters in a string in Rust. I'm trying variations on this:
let lines: Vec<&str> = text_from_file.lines().collect();
let set1 = HashSet::from(lines[0].chars());
With this variation I get the error "the trait bound std::collections::HashSet<_, _>: std::convert::From<&[u8]> is not satisfied". I don't understand Rust enough yet to know how to interpret this. How can I create a HashSet from the characters in a string?

HashSet::from() requires a slice as parameter, but lines[0].chars() is a Chars object, which is an iterator.
To create a HashSet from an iterator, you have two possibilities:
let set1: HashSet<char> = lines[0].chars().collect();
let set1: HashSet<char> = HashSet::from_iter(lines[0].chars());
I prefer the first one, as it's much easier to read for me.

You want to use HashSet::from_iter()
let lines: Vec<&str> = text_from_file.lines().collect();
let set1: HashSet<char> = HashSet::from_iter(lines[0].chars());

Related

What is the most efficient way of taking a number of integer user inputs and storing it in a Vec<i32>?

I was trying to use rust for competitive coding and I was wondering what is the most efficient way of storing user input in a Vec. I have come up with a method but I am afraid that it is slow and redundant.
Here is my code:
use std::io;
fn main() {
let mut input = String::new();
io::stdin().read_line(&mut input).expect("cant read line");
let input:Vec<&str> = input.split(" ").collect();
let input:Vec<String> = input.iter().map(|x| x.to_string()).collect();
let input:Vec<i32> = input.iter().map(|x| x.trim().parse().unwrap()).collect();
println!("{:?}", input);
}
PS: I am new to rust.
I see those ways of improving performance of the code:
Although not really relevant for std::io::stdin(), std::io::BufReader may have great effect for reading e.g. from std::fs::File. Buffer capacity can also matter.
Using locked stdin: let si = std::io::stdin(); let si = si.locked();
Avoiding allocations by keeping vectors around and using extend_from_iter instead of collect, if the code reads multiple line (unlike in the sample you posted in the question).
Maybe avoiding temporary vectors alltogether and just chaining Iterator operations together. Or using a loop like for line in input.split(...) { ... }. It may affect performance in both ways - you need to experiment to find out.
Avoiding to_string() and just storing reference to input buffer (which can also be used to parse() into i32. Note that this may invite famous Rust borrowing and lifetimes complexity.
Maybe finding some fast SIMD-enhanced string to int parser instead of libstd's parse().
Maybe streaming the result to algorithm instead of collecting everything to a Vec first. This can be beneficial especially if multiple threads can be used. For performance, you would still likely need to send data in chunks, not by one single i32.
Yeah, there are some changes you can make that will make your code more precise, simple and faster.
A better code :
use std::io;
fn main() {
let mut input = String::new();
io::stdin().read_line(&mut input).unwrap();
let input: Vec<i32> = input.split_whitespace().map(|x| x.parse().unwrap()).collect();
println!("{:?}", input);
}
Explanation
The input.split_whitespace() returns an iterator containing elements that are seperated by any kind of whitespace including line breaks. This saves the time used in spliting by just one whitespace input.split(" ") and iterating over again with a .trim() method on each string slice to remove any surronding whitespaces.
(You can also checkout input.split_ascii_whitespace(), if you want to restrict the split over ascii whitespaces).
There was no need for the code input.iter().map(|x| x.to_string()).collect(), since you can call also call a .trim() method on a string slice.
This saves some time in both the runtime and coding process, since the .collect() method is only used once and there was just one iteration.

Writing expression in polars-lazy in rust

I need to write my own expression in polars_lazy. Based on my understanding from the source code I need to write a function that returns Expr::Function. The problem is that in order to construct an object of this type, an object of type FunctionOptions must be provided. The caveat is that this class is public but the members are pub(crate) and thus outside of the create one cannot construct such an object.
Are there ways around this?
I don't think you're meant to directly construct Exprs. Instead, you can use functions like polars_lazy::dsl::col() and polars_lazy::dsl::lit() to create expressions, then use methods on Expr to build up the expression. Several of those methods, such as map() and apply(), will give you an Expr::Function.
Personally I think the Rust API for polars is not well documented enough to really use yet. Although the other answer and comments mention apply and map, they don't mention how or the trade-offs. I hope this answer prompts others to correct me with the "right" way to do things.
So first, here's how to use apply on lazy dataframe, even though lazy dataframes don't take apply directly as a method as eager ones do, and mutating in-place:
// not sure how you'd find this type easily from apply documentation
let o = GetOutput::from_type(DataType::UInt32);
// this mutates two in place
let lf = lf.with_column(col("two").apply(str_to_len, o));
And here's how to use it while not mutating the source column and adding a new output column instead:
let o = GetOutput::from_type(DataType::UInt32);
// this adds new column len, two is unchanged
let lf = lf.with_column(col("two").alias("len").apply(str_to_len, o));
With the str_to_len looking like:
fn str_to_len(str_val: Series) -> Result<Series> {
let x = str_val
.utf8()
.unwrap()
.into_iter()
// your actual custom function would be in this map
.map(|opt_name: Option<&str>| opt_name.map(|name: &str| name.len() as u32))
.collect::<UInt32Chunked>();
Ok(x.into_series())
}
Note that it takes Series rather than &Series and wraps in Result.
With a regular (non-lazy) dataframe, apply still mutates but doesn't require with_column:
df.apply("two", str_to_len).expect("applied");
Whereas eager/non-lazy's with_column doesn't require apply:
// the fn we use to make the column names it too
df.with_column(str_to_len(df.column("two").expect("has two"))).expect("with_column");
And str_to_len has slightly different signature:
fn str_to_len(str_val: &Series) -> Series {
let mut x = str_val
.utf8()
.unwrap()
.into_iter()
.map(|opt_name: Option<&str>| opt_name.map(|name: &str| name.len() as u32))
.collect::<UInt32Chunked>();
// NB. this is naming the chunked array, before we even get to a series
x.rename("len");
x.into_series()
}
I know there's reasons to have lazy and eager operate differently, but I wish the Rust documentation made this easier to figure out.

How does skip works in Rust?

I've just seen this answer on how to search for a substring in a given Rust string. The code is something along these lines:
let s = "Hello, world!";
let ss: String = s.chars().skip(7).take(5).collect();
But I am now curious to know how that skip really works. Does it really iterate over the first 7 elements of the iterator before starts yielding? Or it does some trickery behind the scenes?
Taken from the Rust documentation:
Creates an iterator that skips the first n elements.
After they have been consumed, the rest of the elements are yielded.
Basic example:
let a = [1, 2, 3];
let mut iter = a.iter().skip(2);
assert_eq!(iter.next(), Some(&3));
assert_eq!(iter.next(), None);
If you look at Skip implementation, you can see it relies on Iterator::nth internally.
Chars implementation of iterator uses the default nth implementation, that call next in a loop.
slice::Iter implementation offers a specialized implementation of nth, basically just bumping the internal cursor.
As #tadman mentioned, you can't just jump to a char position in a UTF-8 string, so the default implementation is probably the right only.

Most idiomatic way to double every character in a string in Rust

I have a String, and I want to make a new String, with every character in the first one doubled. So "abc" would become "aabbcc" and so on.
The best I've come up with is:
let mut result = String::new();
for c in original_string.chars() {
result.push(c);
result.push(c);
}
result
This works fine. but is there a more succinct (or more idiomatic) way to do this?
In JavaScript I would probably write something like:
original.split('').map(c => c+c).join('')
Or in Ruby:
(original.chars.map { |c| c+c }).join('')
Since Rust also has functional elements, I was wondering if there is a similarly succinct solution.
I would use std::iter::repeat to repeat every char value from the input. This creates an infinite iterator, but for your case we only need to iterate 2 times, so we can use take to limit our iterator, then flatten all the iterators that hold the doubled chars.
use std::iter;
fn main() {
let input = "abc"; //"abc".to_string();
let output = input
.chars()
.flat_map(|c| iter::repeat(c).take(2))
.collect::<String>();
println!("{:?}", output);
}
Playground
Note: To double we are using take(2) but you can use any usize to increase the repetition.
Personally, I would just do exactly what you're doing. Its intent is clear (more clear than the functional approaches you presented from JavaScript or Ruby, in my opinion) and it is efficient. The only thing I would change is perhaps reserve space for the characters, since you know exactly how much space you will need.
let mut result = String::with_capacity(original_string.len() * 2);
However, if you are really in love with this style, you could use flat_map
let result: String = original_string.chars()
.flat_map(|c| std::iter::repeat(c).take(2))
.collect();

How do I convert a Vec<String> to Vec<&str>?

I can convert Vec<String> to Vec<&str> this way:
let mut items = Vec::<&str>::new();
for item in &another_items {
items.push(item);
}
Are there better alternatives?
There are quite a few ways to do it, some have disadvantages, others simply are more readable to some people.
This dereferences s (which is of type &String) to a String "right hand side reference", which is then dereferenced through the Deref trait to a str "right hand side reference" and then turned back into a &str. This is something that is very commonly seen in the compiler, and I therefor consider it idiomatic.
let v2: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(|s| &**s).collect();
Here the deref function of the Deref trait is passed to the map function. It's pretty neat but requires useing the trait or giving the full path.
let v3: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(std::ops::Deref::deref).collect();
This uses coercion syntax.
let v4: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(|s| s as &str).collect();
This takes a RangeFull slice of the String (just a slice into the entire String) and takes a reference to it. It's ugly in my opinion.
let v5: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(|s| &s[..]).collect();
This is uses coercions to convert a &String into a &str. Can also be replaced by a s: &str expression in the future.
let v6: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(|s| { let s: &str = s; s }).collect();
The following (thanks #huon-dbaupp) uses the AsRef trait, which solely exists to map from owned types to their respective borrowed type. There's two ways to use it, and again, prettiness of either version is entirely subjective.
let v7: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(|s| s.as_ref()).collect();
and
let v8: Vec<&str> = v.iter().map(AsRef::as_ref).collect();
My bottom line is use the v8 solution since it most explicitly expresses what you want.
The other answers simply work. I just want to point out that if you are trying to convert the Vec<String> into a Vec<&str> only to pass it to a function taking Vec<&str> as argument, consider revising the function signature as:
fn my_func<T: AsRef<str>>(list: &[T]) { ... }
instead of:
fn my_func(list: &Vec<&str>) { ... }
As pointed out by this question: Function taking both owned and non-owned string collections. In this way both vectors simply work without the need of conversions.
All of the answers idiomatically use iterators and collecting instead of a loop, but do not explain why this is better.
In your loop, you first create an empty vector and then push into it. Rust makes no guarantees about the strategy it uses for growing factors, but I believe the current strategy is that whenever the capacity is exceeded, the vector capacity is doubled. If the original vector had a length of 20, that would be one allocation, and 5 reallocations.
Iterating from a vector produces an iterator that has a "size hint". In this case, the iterator implements ExactSizeIterator so it knows exactly how many elements it will return. map retains this and collect takes advantage of this by allocating enough space in one go for an ExactSizeIterator.
You can also manually do this with:
let mut items = Vec::<&str>::with_capacity(another_items.len());
for item in &another_items {
items.push(item);
}
Heap allocations and reallocations are probably the most expensive part of this entire thing by far; far more expensive than taking references or writing or pushing to a vector when no new heap allocation is involved. It wouldn't surprise me if pushing a thousand elements onto a vector allocated for that length in one go were faster than pushing 5 elements that required 2 reallocations and one allocation in the process.
Another unsung advantage is that using the methods with collect do not store in a mutable variable which one should not use if it's unneeded.
another_items.iter().map(|item| item.deref()).collect::<Vec<&str>>()
To use deref() you must add using use std::ops::Deref
This one uses collect:
let strs: Vec<&str> = another_items.iter().map(|s| s as &str).collect();
Here is another option:
use std::iter::FromIterator;
let v = Vec::from_iter(v.iter().map(String::as_str));
Note that String::as_str is stable since Rust 1.7.

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