How to move items from one vector to another?

help
1

Basically, I want to implement a take_while, but by removing elements from a src vector and pushing them to a dst vector. I was able to solve this with this monstrosity:

use std::collections::VecDeque;

fn pop_push_while<T>(src: Vec<T>, dst: &mut Vec<T>, predicate: &dyn Fn(&T) -> bool) -> Vec<T> {
    let mut src_dq = VecDeque::from(src);
    while !src_dq.is_empty() {
        let item = src_dq.pop_front().unwrap();
        if !predicate(&item) {
            src_dq.push_front(item);
            break;
        }
        dst.push(item);
    }
    Vec::from(src_dq)
}

fn main() {
    let mut src:Vec<usize> = vec![0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
    let mut dst:Vec<usize> = Vec::new();
    
    src = pop_push_while(src, &mut dst, &|i| i < &2);
    assert_eq!(src, vec![2, 3, 4, 5]);
    assert_eq!(dst, vec![0, 1]);
    
    src = pop_push_while(src, &mut dst, &|i| i < &5);
    assert_eq!(src, vec![5]);
    assert_eq!(dst, vec![0, 1, 2, 3, 4]);
}

It works, but I have a few issues with it:

  1. It seems I annotated the predicate wrong, because passing &|i| i < &2 looks weird. I never had to do this for builtin calls that take a predicate.
  2. I'm not happy with the fact that I can't modify src in place. My thinking here was that I should move src since after the call the original src is no longer valid. This happens because I internally create a VecDeque from it and return a new vector.
  3. In general my code looks rather complicated. Given the vast options in the standard library, my guess is that I'm just missing something.

Any recommendations?

2

Maybe have a look the nightly drain_filter, combined with take_while and dst.extend that could be good.

Most callbacks in the standard library are designed with generics, not dynamic dispatch, that's why you have to pass a reference.

1 Like
3

Oh dang, that is slick:

#![feature(drain_filter)]

fn main() {
    let mut src:Vec<usize> = vec![0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
    let dst = src.drain_filter(|i| *i < 2).collect::<Vec<_>>();

    assert_eq!(src, vec![2, 3, 4, 5]);
    assert_eq!(dst, vec![0, 1]);
}
1 Like
4

Sidenote, since I generally don't care to overallocate, I would often use partition and get the 3 resulting Vec (the original and the two new ones).

5

Does this refer to my question about the annotation of predicate? If yes, how would the "correct" annotation look like to make this behave like all the other callbacks?

6

I'm on my phone right now, but it would be something like:

fn foo<T, P>(value: &T, predicate: F) -> bool
where
    P: Fn(&T) -> bool,
{
    predicate(value)
}

Obviously a pretty dumb example, but look at the signatures of the iterator trait's methods.

7

Here is my solution on stable:

fn drain_into_while<T, P>(src: &mut Vec<T>, dst: &mut Vec<T>, predicate: P)
where
    P: Fn(&T) -> bool,
{
    while !src.is_empty() {
        if predicate(&src[0]) {
            dst.push(src.remove(0));
        } else {
            break;
        }
    }
}

fn main() {
    let mut src:Vec<usize> = vec![0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
    let mut dst:Vec<usize> = Vec::new();
    
    drain_into_while(&mut src, &mut dst, |i| *i < 2);

    assert_eq!(src, vec![2, 3, 4, 5]);
    assert_eq!(dst, vec![0, 1]);
    
    drain_into_while(&mut src, &mut dst, |i| *i < 5);
    assert_eq!(src, vec![5]);
    assert_eq!(dst, vec![0, 1, 2, 3, 4]);
}

Thanks a ton @erelde for the pointers!

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