[swift-evolution] Lazy flatMap for Optionals

[Donnacha Oisín Kidney]

Currently, several of the methods on SequenceType in the standard library have lazy variants. flatMap, though, (seems) to have a version missing: while there’s a lazy version for nested sequences, there’s no lazy version for sequences of Optionals. Is there maybe a reason for this that I haven’t thought of? At any rate, here’s what I had in mind:

public struct FlatMapOptionalGenerator<G: GeneratorType, Element>: GeneratorType {
  private let f: G.Element -> Element?
  private var g: G
  public mutating func next() -> Element? {
    while let x = g.next() {
      if let y = f(x) {
        return y
      }
    }
    return nil
  }
}

public struct FlatMapOptionalSequence<S: LazySequenceType, Element>: LazySequenceType {
  private let f: S.Generator.Element -> Element?
  private let s: S
  public func generate() -> FlatMapOptionalGenerator<S.Generator, Element> {
    return FlatMapOptionalGenerator(f: f, g: s.generate())
  }
}

extension LazySequenceType {
  public func flatMap<T>(transform: Generator.Element -> T?) -> FlatMapOptionalSequence<Self, T> {
    return FlatMapOptionalSequence(f: transform, s: self)
  }
}

Does this seem like a good idea?

Oisin.
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