Referring to next/prev series entries
I have a common usage case where I need to iterate through a series, and do something with the current entry and its immediate neighbors - ie the one before or the one after.
Unless I am missing something obvious, neither Rebol nor Red have simple syntax for this.
Here's an example where I want to find the difference between consecutive values:
; create a block of objects
x: [] loop 10 [append x make object! [r: random 100]]
; iterating through the series is easy
forall x [print x/1/r]
; referring to the next entry in the series is possible
x: head x
forall x [unless tail? next x [print x/2/r - x/1/r]]
; referring to the previous entry in the series is awkward
x: next head x
forall x [print x/1/r - get in first back x 'r]
; in an ideal world :)
x: next head x
forall x [print x/1/r - x/0/r]
There are other ways - such as using REPEAT and setting a word to one less than the interation counter - any suggestions for more Reddish ways?
posted by: Sunanda 4-Nov-2018/5:07:46-8:00
Negative numbers will go back in the series in a similar way in Red and Rebol.
forall x [print x/1/r - x/-1/r]
Ren-C uses 0 to get the prior value.
posted by: Chris 4-Nov-2018/12:54:47-8:00
The 0 was a convention introduced in R3-Alpha, which was largely unpopular...and Ren-C ultimately went ahead and changed to have -1 pick the prior value (circa June):
https://github.com/metaeducation/ren-c/pull/818
posted by: Fork 4-Nov-2018/18:29:39-8:00
Thanks Chris - so simple, when you know how :)
I was tripped up by expecting Rebol's ordinal number line to have a zeroth.
posted by: Sunanda 5-Nov-2018/3:23:24-8:00
My bad HF--tested on a slightly older version of Ren-C
posted by: Chris 5-Nov-2018/16:23:48-8:00
I often used loops with a counter for those sorts of routines:
repeat i length? x [print [x/(i) x/(i - 1)]]
posted by: Nick 5-Nov-2018/23:32:46-8:00
Given:
x: [] loop 10 [append x make object! [r: random 100]]
From the answers above, this does not work:
forall x [print x/1/r - x/-1/r]
And yes, Chris caught his error.
Proof:
>> forall x [print x/1/r - x/-1/r]
** Script Error: Cannot use path on none! value
** Where: forskip
** Near: forall x [print x/1/r - x/-1/r]
However, this does:
out1: copy []
n: 2
until [
append out1 reduce [x/(n)/r - x/(n - 1)/r]
n: n + 1
n = (1 + length? x)
]
Proof:
out2: copy []
x: head x
forskip x 2 [
append out2 reduce [negate x/1/r '+ x/2/r]
if not none? ok: attempt [ reduce [negate x/2/r '+ x/3/r]][append out2 ok]
]
print out1
print reduce out2
posted by: Stone Johnson 23-Aug-2019/18:17:41-7:00
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