Collect successive pairs from a stream

Question

Given a stream such as { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 },

how can I most elegantly transform it into given form:

{ new Pair(0, 1), new Pair(1, 2), new Pair(2, 3), new Pair(3, 4) }

(assuming, of course, I've defined class Pair)?

Edit: This isn't strictly about ints or primitive streams. The answer should be general for a stream of any type.

Answer 1

You can do this with the Stream.reduce() method (I haven't seen any other answers using this technique).

public static <T> List<Pair<T, T>> consecutive(List<T> list) {
    List<Pair<T, T>> pairs = new LinkedList<>();
    list.stream().reduce((a, b) -> {
        pairs.add(new Pair<>(a, b));
        return b;
    });
    return pairs;
}

Answer 2

In your case, I would write my custom IntFunction which keeps track of the last int passed and use that to map the original IntStream.

import java.util.function.IntFunction;
import java.util.stream.IntStream;

public class PairFunction implements IntFunction<PairFunction.Pair> {

  public static class Pair {

    private final int first;
    private final int second;

    public Pair(int first, int second) {
      this.first = first;
      this.second = second;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
      return "[" + first + "|" + second + "]";
    }
  }

  private int last;
  private boolean first = true;

  @Override
  public Pair apply(int value) {
    Pair pair = !first ? new Pair(last, value) : null;
    last = value;
    first = false;
    return pair;
  }

  public static void main(String[] args) {

    IntStream intStream = IntStream.of(0, 1, 2, 3, 4);
    final PairFunction pairFunction = new PairFunction();
    intStream.mapToObj(pairFunction)
        .filter(p -> p != null) // filter out the null
        .forEach(System.out::println); // display each Pair

  }

}

Answer 3

As others have observed, there is, due to the nature of the problem, some statefulness required.

I was faced with a similar problem, in which I wanted what was essentially the Oracle SQL function LEAD. My attempt to implement that is below.

/**
 * Stream that pairs each element in the stream with the next subsequent element.
 * The final pair will have only the first item, the second will be null.
 */
<T> Spliterator<Pair<T>> lead(final Stream<T> stream)
{
    final Iterator<T> input = stream.sequential().iterator();

    final Iterable<Pair<T>> iterable = () ->
    {
        return new Iterator<Pair<T>>()
        {
            Optional<T> current = getOptionalNext(input);

            @Override
            public boolean hasNext()
            {
                return current.isPresent();
            }

            @Override
            public Pair<T> next()
            {
                Optional<T> next = getOptionalNext(input);
                final Pair<T> pair = next.isPresent()
                    ? new Pair(current.get(), next.get())
                    : new Pair(current.get(), null);
                current = next;

                return pair;
            }
        };
    };

    return iterable.spliterator();
}

private <T> Optional<T> getOptionalNext(final Iterator<T> iterator)
{
    return iterator.hasNext()
        ? Optional.of(iterator.next())
        : Optional.empty();
}

Answer 4

Run a for loop that runs from 0 to length-1 of your stream

for(int i = 0 ; i < stream.length-1 ; i++)
{
    Pair pair = new Pair(stream[i], stream[i+1]);
    // then add your pair to an array
}

Answer 5

The Java 8 streams library is primarily geared toward splitting streams into smaller chunks for parallel processing, so stateful pipeline stages are quite limited, and doing things like getting the index of the current stream element and accessing adjacent stream elements are not supported.

A typical way to solve these problems, with some limitations, of course, is to drive the stream by indexes and rely on having the values being processed in some random-access data structure like an ArrayList from which the elements can be retrieved. If the values were in arrayList, one could generate the pairs as requested by doing something like this:

    IntStream.range(1, arrayList.size())
             .mapToObj(i -> new Pair(arrayList.get(i-1), arrayList.get(i)))
             .forEach(System.out::println);

Of course the limitation is that the input cannot be an infinite stream. This pipeline can be run in parallel, though.

Answer 6

This is an interesting problem. Is my hybrid attempt below any good?

public static void main(String[] args) {
    List<Integer> list = Arrays.asList(1, 2, 3);
    Iterator<Integer> first = list.iterator();
    first.next();
    if (first.hasNext())
        list.stream()
        .skip(1)
        .map(v -> new Pair(first.next(), v))
        .forEach(System.out::println);
}

I believe it does not lend itself to parallel processing, and hence may be disqualified.