How to "multicast" an async iterable?
This is not easily possible. You will need to explicitly tee it. This is similar to the situation for synchronous iterators, just a bit more complicated:
const AsyncIteratorProto = Object.getPrototypeOf(Object.getPrototypeOf(async function*(){}.prototype));
function teeAsync(iterable) {
const iterator = iterable[Symbol.asyncIterator]();
const buffers = [[], []];
function makeIterator(buffer, i) {
return Object.assign(Object.create(AsyncIteratorProto), {
next() {
if (!buffer) return Promise.resolve({done: true, value: undefined});
if (buffer.length) return buffer.shift();
const res = iterator.next();
if (buffers[i^1]) buffers[i^1].push(res);
return res;
},
async return() {
if (buffer) {
buffer = buffers[i] = null;
if (!buffers[i^1]) await iterator.return();
}
return {done: true, value: undefined};
},
});
}
return buffers.map(makeIterator);
}
You should ensure that both iterators are consumed at about the same rate so that the buffer doesn't grow too large.