My initial problem was to convert a tuple of different types to a string. In Python, this would be something like:
>> a = ( 1.3, 1, 'c' )
>> b = map( lambda x: str(x), a )
['1.3', '1', 'c']
>> " ".join(b)
'1.3 1 c"
Yet, Rust doesn't support map on tuples -- only on vector-like structures. Obviously, this is due to being able to pack different types into a tuple and the lack of function overloading. Also, I couldn't find a way to get the tuple length at runtime. So, I guess, a macro would be needed to do the conversion.
As a start, I tried to match the head of an tuple, something like:
// doesn't work
match some_tuple {
(a, ..) => println!("{}", a),
_ => ()
}
So, my question:
- Is it possible, using library functions, to convert a tuple to a string, specifying an arbitrary separator?
- How to write a macro to be able to map functions to arbitrary sized tuples?
Here's an overly-clever macro solution:
trait JoinTuple {
fn join_tuple(&self, sep: &str) -> String;
}
macro_rules! tuple_impls {
() => {};
( ($idx:tt => $typ:ident), $( ($nidx:tt => $ntyp:ident), )* ) => {
impl<$typ, $( $ntyp ),*> JoinTuple for ($typ, $( $ntyp ),*)
where
$typ: ::std::fmt::Display,
$( $ntyp: ::std::fmt::Display ),*
{
fn join_tuple(&self, sep: &str) -> String {
let parts: &[&::std::fmt::Display] = &[&self.$idx, $( &self.$nidx ),*];
parts.iter().rev().map(|x| x.to_string()).collect::<Vec<_>>().join(sep)
}
}
tuple_impls!($( ($nidx => $ntyp), )*);
};
}
tuple_impls!(
(9 => J),
(8 => I),
(7 => H),
(6 => G),
(5 => F),
(4 => E),
(3 => D),
(2 => C),
(1 => B),
(0 => A),
);
fn main() {
let a = (1.3, 1, 'c');
let s = a.join_tuple(", ");
println!("{}", s);
assert_eq!("1.3, 1, c", s);
}
The basic idea is that we can take a tuple and unpack it into a &[&fmt::Display]
. Once we have that, it's straight-forward to map each item into a string and then combine them all with a separator. Here's what that would look like on its own:
fn main() {
let tup = (1.3, 1, 'c');
let slice: &[&::std::fmt::Display] = &[&tup.0, &tup.1, &tup.2];
let parts: Vec<_> = slice.iter().map(|x| x.to_string()).collect();
let joined = parts.join(", ");
println!("{}", joined);
}
The next step would be to create a trait and implement it for the specific case:
trait TupleJoin {
fn tuple_join(&self, sep: &str) -> String;
}
impl<A, B, C> TupleJoin for (A, B, C)
where
A: ::std::fmt::Display,
B: ::std::fmt::Display,
C: ::std::fmt::Display,
{
fn tuple_join(&self, sep: &str) -> String {
let slice: &[&::std::fmt::Display] = &[&self.0, &self.1, &self.2];
let parts: Vec<_> = slice.iter().map(|x| x.to_string()).collect();
parts.join(sep)
}
}
fn main() {
let tup = (1.3, 1, 'c');
println!("{}", tup.tuple_join(", "));
}
This only implements our trait for a specific size of tuple, which may be fine for certain cases, but certainly isn't cool yet. The standard library uses some macros to reduce the drudgery of the copy-and-paste that you would need to do to get more sizes. I decided to be even lazier and reduce the copy-and-paste of that solution!
Instead of clearly and explicitly listing out each size of tuple and the corresponding index/generic name, I made my macro recursive. That way, I only have to list it out once, and all the smaller sizes are just part of the recursive call. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to make it go in a forwards direction, so I just flipped everything around and went backwards. This means there's a small inefficiency in that we have to use a reverse iterator, but that should overall be a small price to pay.
The other answer helped me a lot because it clearly illustrated the power of Rust's simple macro system once you make use of recursion and pattern matching.
I've managed to make a few crude improvements (might be able to make the patterns a bit simpler, but it's rather tricky) on top of it so that the tuple accessor->type list is reversed by the macro at compile time before expansion into the trait implementation so that we no longer need to have a .rev()
call at runtime, thus making it more efficient:
trait JoinTuple {
fn join_tuple(&self, sep: &str) -> String;
}
macro_rules! tuple_impls {
() => {}; // no more
(($idx:tt => $typ:ident), $( ($nidx:tt => $ntyp:ident), )*) => {
/*
* Invoke recursive reversal of list that ends in the macro expansion implementation
* of the reversed list
*/
tuple_impls!([($idx, $typ);] $( ($nidx => $ntyp), )*);
tuple_impls!($( ($nidx => $ntyp), )*); // invoke macro on tail
};
/*
* ([accumulatedList], listToReverse); recursively calls tuple_impls until the list to reverse
+ is empty (see next pattern)
*/
([$(($accIdx: tt, $accTyp: ident);)+] ($idx:tt => $typ:ident), $( ($nidx:tt => $ntyp:ident), )*) => {
tuple_impls!([($idx, $typ); $(($accIdx, $accTyp); )*] $( ($nidx => $ntyp), ) *);
};
// Finally expand into the implementation
([($idx:tt, $typ:ident); $( ($nidx:tt, $ntyp:ident); )*]) => {
impl<$typ, $( $ntyp ),*> JoinTuple for ($typ, $( $ntyp ),*)
where $typ: ::std::fmt::Display,
$( $ntyp: ::std::fmt::Display ),*
{
fn join_tuple(&self, sep: &str) -> String {
let parts = vec![self.$idx.to_string(), $( self.$nidx.to_string() ),*];
parts.join(sep)
}
}
}
}
tuple_impls!(
(9 => J),
(8 => I),
(7 => H),
(6 => G),
(5 => F),
(4 => E),
(3 => D),
(2 => C),
(1 => B),
(0 => A),
);
#[test]
fn test_join_tuple() {
let a = ( 1.3, 1, 'c' );
let s = a.join_tuple(", ");
println!("{}", s);
assert_eq!("1.3, 1, c", s);
}