Julia: Feature Request: `in` sorted array

[remi-garcia]

Their is a "find" function in sorted arrays: searchsorted:
https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/eb2a8018191adf0f5c7f64d84d7e98132d0cbdcb/base/sort.jl#L212-L229

Is that a possible option to add insorted that does the same as in but knowing that the collection is sorted?

[goretkin]

Without giving it much thought, this seems like it might be better (more orthogonally) achieved with a wrapper type to annotate that an AbstractVector is sorted.

struct Sorted{T}
    _::T
end

function Base.in(x, v::Sorted)
    r = searchsorted(a._, x)
    return length(r) > 0
end

Then you can even use infix in:

x in Sorted(vector)

[remi-garcia]

I think I would prefer an independent function to be consistent with the functions searchsorted's. Otherwise the user side would only have findfirst instead of findfirst and searchsortedfirst with findfirst(x, v::Sorted) = searchsortedfirst(x, v._).

I'm working on it but I have a few issues with insorted for AbstractRange.

[goretkin]

I think I would prefer an independent function to be consistent with the functions searchsorted's

I understand the desire to be consistent. In my opinion, the situation with searchsortedfirst and findfirst is already something that could be improved, so I do not take it for granted that it's worth being consistent with it.

There are three ideas: search (or find), sorted/unsorted, first/last/all. So really it's find, with two axes of variation: whether the collection is sorted, and whether you want first, last, or all.

If I'm not mistaken
searchsortedfirst(args...) == first(searchsorted(args...))
and
searchsortedlast(args...) == last(searchsorted(args...))

(here is a monte carlo proof:

using Test

for _ = 1:10000
  a = cumsum(rand(0:1, 10))
  q = rand(1:10)

  r = searchsorted(a, q)
  fr = searchsortedfirst(a, q)
  lr = searchsortedlast(a, q)

  @test first(r) === fr
  @test last(r) === lr
end

)
So there is a way to spell searchsortedfirst that doesn't mash all of the ideas into one name, possibly at the cost of some performance, though I think a clever design might be able to eliminate that gap.

findall(s::Sorted) could be defined to be searchsorted(s._), and similarly for firstfirst and findlast

[remi-garcia]

I think I would prefer an independent function to be consistent with the functions searchsorted's

I understand the desire to be consistent. In my opinion, the situation with searchsortedfirst and findfirst is already something that could be improved, so I do not take it for granted that it's worth being consistent with it.

There are three ideas: search (or find), sorted/unsorted, first/last/all. So really it's find, with two axes of variation: whether the collection is sorted, and whether you want first, last, or all.

Imho the solution should be found in a better naming and not a new structure, that would had an extra layer that should be avoided. What does sort!(coll::Vector{Int})?

However, searchsortedfirst() != findfirst() if the element is missing from the collection. The first returns an index while the later returns nothing. I would probably be for adding a findsortedfirst that returns the same as findfirst but efficiently in sorted AbstractArray.

[vtjnash]

Duplicate of #24883

[goretkin]

I can see that my comments have duplicated things that I now see have been written before, but I don't see the feature request as a duplicate.

[remi-garcia]

Sorry if I misunderstood something, to me the feature request was not a duplicate.