Enumerator

A class which allows both internal and external iteration.

An Enumerator can be created by the following methods.

• Object#to_enum

• Object#enum_for

• Enumerator.new

Most methods have two forms: a block form where the contents are evaluated for each item in the enumeration, and a non-block form which returns a new Enumerator wrapping the iteration.

enumerator = %w(one two three).each
puts enumerator.class # => Enumerator

enumerator.each_with_object("foo") do |item, obj|
  puts "#{obj}: #{item}"
end

# foo: one
# foo: two
# foo: three

enum_with_obj = enumerator.each_with_object("foo")
puts enum_with_obj.class # => Enumerator

enum_with_obj.each do |item, obj|
  puts "#{obj}: #{item}"
end

# foo: one
# foo: two
# foo: three

This allows you to chain Enumerators together. For example, you can map a list’s elements to strings containing the index and the element as a string via:

puts %w[foo bar baz].map.with_index { |w, i| "#{i}:#{w}" }
# => ["0:foo", "1:bar", "2:baz"]

External Iteration

An Enumerator can also be used as an external iterator. For example, Enumerator#next returns the next value of the iterator or raises StopIteration if the Enumerator is at the end.

e = [1,2,3].each   # returns an enumerator object.
puts e.next   # => 1
puts e.next   # => 2
puts e.next   # => 3
puts e.next   # raises StopIteration

next, next_values, peek, and peek_values are the only methods which use external iteration (and Array#zip(Enumerable-not-Array) which uses next internally).

These methods do not affect other internal enumeration methods, unless the underlying iteration method itself has side-effect, e.g. IO#each_line.

FrozenError will be raised if these methods are called against a frozen enumerator. Since rewind and feed also change state for external iteration, these methods may raise FrozenError too.

External iteration differs significantly from internal iteration due to using a Fiber:

• The Fiber adds some overhead compared to internal enumeration.

• The stacktrace will only include the stack from the Enumerator, not above.

• Fiber-local variables are not inherited inside the Enumerator Fiber, which instead starts with no Fiber-local variables.

• Fiber storage variables are inherited and are designed to handle Enumerator Fibers. Assigning to a Fiber storage variable only affects the current Fiber, so if you want to change state in the caller Fiber of the Enumerator Fiber, you need to use an extra indirection (e.g., use some object in the Fiber storage variable and mutate some ivar of it).

Concretely:

Thread.current[:fiber_local] = 1
Fiber[:storage_var] = 1
e = Enumerator.new do |y|
  p Thread.current[:fiber_local] # for external iteration: nil, for internal iteration: 1
  p Fiber[:storage_var] # => 1, inherited
  Fiber[:storage_var] += 1
  y << 42
end

p e.next # => 42
p Fiber[:storage_var] # => 1 (it ran in a different Fiber)

e.each { p _1 }
p Fiber[:storage_var] # => 2 (it ran in the same Fiber/"stack" as the current Fiber)

Convert External Iteration to Internal Iteration

You can use an external iterator to implement an internal iterator as follows:

def ext_each(e)
  while true
    begin
      vs = e.next_values
    rescue StopIteration
      return $!.result
    end
    y = yield(*vs)
    e.feed y
  end
end

o = Object.new

def o.each
  puts yield
  puts yield(1)
  puts yield(1, 2)
  3
end

# use o.each as an internal iterator directly.
puts o.each {|*x| puts x; [:b, *x] }
# => [], [:b], [1], [:b, 1], [1, 2], [:b, 1, 2], 3

# convert o.each to an external iterator for
# implementing an internal iterator.
puts ext_each(o.to_enum) {|*x| puts x; [:b, *x] }
# => [], [:b], [1], [:b, 1], [1, 2], [:b, 1, 2], 3