List Ops

List Ops

Hard

Instructions

Implement basic list operations.

In functional languages list operations like length, map, and reduce are very common. Implement a series of basic list operations, without using existing functions.

The precise number and names of the operations to be implemented will be track dependent to avoid conflicts with existing names, but the general operations you will implement include:

  • append (given two lists, add all items in the second list to the end of the first list);
  • concatenate (given a series of lists, combine all items in all lists into one flattened list);
  • filter (given a predicate and a list, return the list of all items for which predicate(item) is True);
  • length (given a list, return the total number of items within it);
  • map (given a function and a list, return the list of the results of applying function(item) on all items);
  • foldl (given a function, a list, and initial accumulator, fold (reduce) each item into the accumulator from the left);
  • foldr (given a function, a list, and an initial accumulator, fold (reduce) each item into the accumulator from the right);
  • reverse (given a list, return a list with all the original items, but in reversed order).

Note, the ordering in which arguments are passed to the fold functions (foldl, foldr) is significant.

The tests for this exercise require you to use extensions, a mechanism for adding new functionality to an existing class whose source you do not directly control without having to subclass it. To learn more about Kotlin's implementations of extensions, check out the official documentation.

The customFoldLeft and customFoldRight methods are "fold" functions, which is a concept well-known in the functional programming world, but less so in the object-oriented one. If you'd like more background information, check out this fold page.

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