Io(ugh)ta
Helpers for defining Go-like constants and hashes in Ruby using iota.
Go has quite a nice facility for defining constants derived from a sequential value using a simple and elegant syntax, so I thought I’d steal it for Ruby. Rubyists tend to group constants together in hashes rather than littering their programs with countless constants, so there’s a mechanism for that, too.
Here’s an example, written in Go:
```go type Allergen int
const ( IgEggs Allergen = 1 « iota // 1 « 0 which is 00000001 IgChocolate // 1 « 1 which is 00000010 IgNuts // 1 « 2 which is 00000100 IgStrawberries // 1 « 3 which is 00001000 IgShellfish // 1 « 4 which is 00010000 ) ```
Here it is in Ruby, using ioughta:
```ruby Object.ioughta_const( :IG_EGGS, ->(ioughta) { 1 « ioughta }, :IG_CHOCOLATE, :IG_NUTS, :IG_STRAWBERRIES, :IG_SHELLFISH )
IG_STRAWBERRIES # => 8 ```
Or, perhaps a little more Rubyishly:
```ruby IG = Object.ioughta_hash( :eggs, ->(i) { 1 « i }, :chocolate, :nuts, :strawberries, :shellfish ).freeze
IG[:strawberries] # => 8 ```
Installation
Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:
ruby
gem 'ioughta'
And then execute:
sh
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
sh
$ gem install ioughta
Usage
Ioughta works just like const
and iota
do in Go, with only a few minor
differences. You must include
the module in your program, class, or module in
order to start using it. The iterator starts at zero (0
) and increments for
each constant. The default lambda is simply :itself
, so you can very easily
create a sequence of constants with consecutive integer values:
```ruby require ‘ioughta’ include Ioughta
Object.ioughta_const(:FOO, :BAR, :QUX)
QUX # => 2 ```
To skip value(s) in the sequence, use the :_
symbol:
```ruby Object.ioughta_const(:, :FOO, :BAR, :, :QUX)
QUX # => 4 ```
As soon as Ioughta sees a lambda, it will start using it to generate future values from the iterator. In Go parlance, this is (apparently) known as implicit repetition of the last non-empty expression list. You can redefine the lambda as many times as you like:
ruby
Object.ioughta_const(
:A, # will use the default lambda (0 => 0)
:B, ->(i) { i * 2 }, # will multiply by two (1 => 2)
:C, # will also multiply by two (2 => 4)
:D, ->(j) { j ** 3 }, # will cube (3 => 27)
:E, # will also cube (4 => 64)
:F, # cube all the things (5 => 125)
:G, proc(&:itself) # restore the default behavior (6 => 6)
)
The only major feature missing from the Go implementation is the ability to
perform parallel assignment in the constant list. We’re defining a list of
terms, not a list of expressions, so it’s not possible to do in Ruby without
resourcing to nasty eval
tricks. Don’t forget to separate your terms with
commas!
You’ve probably noticed that in order to use Ioughta in the top-level
namespace, we need to explicitly specify the Object
receiver (just like we
need to do for #const_set
). I didn’t want to get too crazy with the
monkeypatching and/or dynamic dispatch. No such limitation exists when
including Ioughta in a module or class, thanks to the available context. Also,
if the ioughta_const
and ioughta_hash
methods are too ugly for you (I don’t
blame you), they’re aliased as iota_const
and iota_hash
, respectively.
Here is a very contrived and arbitrary example:
```ruby require ‘ioughta’
module MyFileUtils include Ioughta
iota_const :EXECUTE, ->(b) { 0b1 « b }, :WRITE, :READ iota_const :TACKY, ->(b) { 0b1 « b }, :SETGID, :SETUID
SHIFT = iota_hash(:other, ->(d) { d * 3 }, :group, :user, :special).freeze MASK = iota_hash(:other, ->(_o, key) { 07 « SHIFT[key] }, :group, :user, :special).freeze
def self.mask_and_shift(mode, field) (mode & MASK[field]) » SHIFT[field] end end
MyFileUtils.mask_and_shift(0644, :user) & MyFileUtils::EXECUTE # => 0 MyFileUtils.mask_and_shift(01777, :special) & MyFileUtils::TACKY # => 1 ```
One note on the above: the lambda can take the key at the current iteration as an optional second argument.
Development
After checking out the repo, run bin/setup
to install dependencies. Then, run
rake spec
to run the tests. You can also run bin/console
for an interactive
prompt that will allow you to experiment.
To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install
. To
release a new version, update the version number in version.rb
, and then run
bundle exec rake release
, which will create a git tag for the version, push
git commits and tags, and push the .gem
file to
rubygems.org.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/mwpastore/ioughta.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.