scala duplicate elements in list
A more general solution would be something like:
def duplicate[T](list: List[T]): List[T] = list.flatMap(x => List[T](x, x))
Using immutable collections won't be all that efficient for very large data sets. A simple implementation using the mutable ListBuffer
is already 10 times faster than the above (using a list with one million elements):
def duplicate[T](list: List[T]): List[T] = {
val buffer = collection.mutable.ListBuffer[T]()
list.foreach{ x =>
buffer += x
buffer += x
}
buffer.toList
}
This uses a general technique of appending to a ListBuffer
for performance, then converting to the immutable List
at the end.
Do you really need lists? can you do better by being more generic? Lists are often over-used when other collections can be much better suited. Here's a method which takes any Seq and creates a Stream which duplicates the items, Streams are naturally lazy, You won't necessarily have the memory overhead of creating and throwing away a lot of little lists:
def dupe[A](as: Seq[A]): Stream[A] = as match {
case Seq(h, t @ _*) => h #:: h #:: dupe(t)
case _ => Stream.empty
}
We can see that it acts lazily:
scala> dupe(List(1,2,3,4))
res1: Stream[Int] = Stream(1, ?)
Lazily enough that it works in very large or even infinite input:
scala> dupe(Stream.range(1, Int.MaxValue)).take(10).force
res2: scala.collection.immutable.Stream[Int] = Stream(1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5)
scala> dupe(Stream.continually(1)).take(10).force
res3: scala.collection.immutable.Stream[Int] = Stream(1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
if you really want a list:
scala> dupe(List(1,2,3,4)).toList
res5: List[Int] = List(1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4)