Question

I’d like to group a sequence into a map of sequences, based on a discriminator of type Option, similar to the result of the groupBy method but where values resulting in None are discarded. Or perhaps, grouping by a PartialFunction discriminator and discarding those for which the partial function is not defined.

Here is a concrete example:

I have a collection of names, and a collection of namespaces. Some, but not all, of the names belong in a valid namespace, and I want to group those that do into a Map, discarding those that don’t.

Currently my solution is equivalent to:

val names = List("ns1.foo", "ns2.bar", "ns2.baz", "froznit")
val namespaces = List("ns1", "ns2")

def findNamespace(n: String): Option[String] = namespaces.find(n.startsWith)

val groupedNames = names.groupBy(findNamespace).collect {
  case (Some(ns), name) => (ns, name)
}
// Map((ns1,List(ns1.foo)), (ns2,List(ns2.bar, ns2.baz)))

My concern about this solution is that, using names.groupBy(findNamespace), I’m creating an intermediate Map which contains all the names I don’t care about, under the key None. If the number of names which I discard becomes large, this solution becomes less attractive.

My attempt to avoid this is a bit of a trainwreck, though:

val groupedNames =
  names.
    map(n => (findNamespace(n), n)).
    collect({ case (Some(ns), n) => (ns, n) }).
    groupBy(_._1).
    map({ case (ns, names) => (ns, names.map(_._2)) })

If you were to solve this in a smarter way, what would it be?

---

Edit: ideally, the solution should only call findNamespace(name) once for each name, and build the Map using only the Option[String] values, without calling a separate hasNamespace(name) predicate.

Answer 1

You can use a foldLeft:

val gn = names.foldLeft(Map[String, List[String]]()){ case (acc, name) =>
  findNamespace(name) match { 
    case Some(ns) => acc + (ns -> (name :: acc.get(ns).getOrElse(Nil)))
    case _ => acc
  }
}

Assuming order does not matter otherwise you can reverse the values with gn.mapValues(_.reverse).