Accumulators and Counters
A accumulator, as defined below, is a data structure that maintains an accumulated number for each key. This is a counter when the accumulated values reflect the counts:
struct Accumulator{K, V<:Number}
map::Dict{K, V}
end
Constructors
There are different ways to construct an accumulator/counter:
a = Accumulator{K, V}() # construct an accumulator with key-type K and
# accumulated value type V
a = Accumulator(dict) # construct an accumulator from a dictionary
a = counter(K) # construct a counter, i.e. an accumulator with
# key type K and value type Int
a = counter(dict) # construct a counter from a dictionary
a = counter(seq) # construct a counter by counting keys in a sequence
a = counter(gen) # construct a counter by counting keys in a generator
Usage
Usage of an accumulator/counter:
# let a and a2 be accumulators/counters
a[x] # get the current value/count for x,
# if x was not added to a, it returns zero.
a[x] = v # sets the current value/count for `x` to `v`
inc!(a, x) # increment the value/count for x by 1
inc!(a, x, v) # increment the value/count for x by v
dec!(a, x) # decrement the value/count for x by 1
dec!(a, x, v) # decrement the value/count for x by v
reset!(a, x) # remove a key x from a, and return its current value
merge!(a, a2) # add all counts from a2 to a1
merge(a, a2) # return a new accumulator/counter that combines the
# values/counts in both a and a2
# `a[v] + a2[v]` over all `v` in the universe
merge
is the multiset sum operation (sometimes written ⊎).
Use as a multiset
An Accumulator{T, <:Integer} where T
such as is returned by counter
, is a multiset or Bag, of objects of type T
. If the count type is not an integer but a more general real number, then this is a form of fuzzy multiset. We support a number of operations supporting the use of Accumulator
s as multisets.
Note that these operations will throw an error if the accumulator has negative or zero counts for any items.
setdiff(a1, a2) # The opposite of `merge` (i.e. multiset sum),
# returns a new multiset with the count of items in `a2` removed from `a1`, down to a minimum of zero
# `max(a1[v] - a2[v], 0)` over all `v` in the universe
union(a1, a2) # multiset union (sometimes called maximum, or lowest common multiple)
# returns a new multiset with the counts being the higher of those in `a1` or `a2`.
# `max(a1[v], a2[v])` over all `v` in the universe
intersect(a1, a2) # multiset intersection (sometimes called infimum or greatest common divisor)
# returns a new multiset with the counts being the lowest of those in `a1` or `a2`.
# Note that this means things not occurring in both with be removed (count zero).
# `min(a1[v], a2[v])` over all `v` in the universe