Functional hypering

In my last post I used a one-shot-operator to improve neatness. Sadly, by defining custom operators we also improve Rakudo’s slowness. After staring at the code form quite some time, I realised that hyper- and meta-operators are code generators. They produce a new operator in-place, which is then used with two operands. In functional programming we do the same thing by returning a sub from a sub.

multi sub hyperize(&code, '«') {
    sub (@little, @large) {
       ((@little xx *).flat Z @large).flat.map(&code)
    }
}

my &hyper-assume = hyperize({&^a.assuming($^b)}, '«');

sub sc($_) {
    .words».&{ hyper-assume((&lc, &uc), .comb)».().join }
}

Hyper-operators have a “direction” indicated by using » or «. Whereby the pointy bit points at the operand that doesn’t stop iteration. In hyperize I’m doing the same with a string literal.

However, this is terribadly slow. The culprit is .assuming, which has been reported to the authorities and will likely be fixed with RakuAST. In my case I don’t really need the fancy things .assuming does.

sub simple-assume(&routine, |tail) {
    sub (|c) {
        my \real-args = \(|tail, |c);
        routine(|real-args)
    }
}

multi sub hyperize(&code, '«') {
    sub (@little, @large) {
       ((@little xx *).flat Z @large).flat.map(&code)
    }
}

my &hyper-assume = hyperize({simple-assume(&^a, $^b)}, '«');

sub sc($_) {
    .words».&{ hyper-assume((&lc, &uc), .comb)».().join }
}

A speed up of factor 608 seems to be quite acceptable. No kidding, as soon as .assuming is involved Rakudo refuses to inline and as a consequence of that to JIT.

I will try to provide a sub assuming (right now we only have the method-form), provided I find a reasonable way to implement the advanced stuff, like skipping arguments with a Whatever.