How to flatten nested tuples in scala

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In a project which I’ve been working on, I encountered a situation to flatten a nested tuple but couldn’t come up with a way to do so, hence out of curiosity I started googling about it and came to the following conclusion.

As for an example I had a structure something similar to the one mentioned below, though not identical:


val structureToOperateOn = List(List("a1","a2","a3"), List("b1","b2","b3") , List("c1","c2","c3"), List(10,1,11))

and, supposedly I wanted to make structureToOperateOn something like this:


"a1", "b1", "c1", 10
"a2", "b2", "c2", 1
"a3", "b3", "c3", 11

So the first thing that came to my mind was to use foldLeft:


val operatedStructure = (structureToOperateOn.tail.foldLeft(structureToOperateOn.head)((a,b) => a zip b)).asInstanceOf[List[(((String,String),String),Int)]]

which resulted in something like this:


List(((("a1","b1"),"c1"),10), ((("a2","b2"),"c2"),1), ((("a3","b3"),"c3"),11))

Next, I thought of flattening the tuples and came across Shapeless. Although I think scala should have something to flatten tuples, the best way it could be done as of now is to use Shapeless library. Anyways, this is how flattening tuples using Shapeless works:


import shapeless._
import shapeless.ops.tuple.FlatMapper
import syntax.std.tuple._

object NestedTuple {
trait LowPriorityFlatten extends Poly1 {
implicit def default[T] = at[T](Tuple1(_))
}

object flatten extends LowPriorityFlatten {
implicit def caseTuple[P <: Product](implicit fm: FlatMapper[P, flatten.type]) =
at[P](_.flatMap(flatten))
}

val structureToOperateOn = List(List("a1","a2","a3"), List("b1","b2","b3") , List("c1","c2","c3"), List(10,1,11))
val operatedStructure = (structureToOperateOn.tail.foldLeft(structureToOperateOn.head)((a,b) => a zip b)).asInstanceOf[List[(((String,String),String),Int)]]

val flattenedTuples = operatedStructure map (tuple => flatten(tuple)) // This should be List((a1,b1,c1,10), (a2,b2,c2,1), (a3,b3,c3,11))

}

After messing around with nested tuples, I finally thought it’d be better to have an alternative way to get the required result instead of adding a new library in the project. Regardless, it could be very helpful in scenarios where you might get stuck and would want to ultimately flatten a tuple.

This was what I used as an alternative:


val operatedStructure = structureToOperateOn.transpose

which resulted in:


List(List("a1", "b1", "c1", 10), List("a2", "b2", "c2", 1), List("a3", "b3", "c3", 11))

So to conclude, you can use Shapeless in order to flatten complex nested tuples if need be.

5 thoughts on “How to flatten nested tuples in scala2 min read”

I don’t think that is the standard meaning of flatten. My recollection is that flattening your original list should produce: (a1, a2, a3, b1, b2, b3, c1, c2, c3, 10, 1, 11).

Sidharth Khattri says:

August 16, 2014 at 3:16 PM

Hi Scott, in the example I wanted to flatten (((“a1″,”b1″),”c1”),10), (((“a2″,”b2″),”c2”),1) and (((“a3″,”b3″),”c3”),11) individually after using foldLeft so as to get something like:
“a1”, “b1”, “c1”, 10
“a2”, “b2”, “c2”, 1
“a3”, “b3”, “c3”, 11
I modified the flattening example a bit so as to make things more clear.
1. scott m gardner says:
  
  August 18, 2014 at 10:28 PM
  
  That seems to be more like a multiway zip.

It would be nice to provide some links and attribution here, since your implementation was copied verbatim from the Shapeless examples.

Sidharth Khattri says:

August 18, 2014 at 10:06 PM

Hi Travis, this blog post is completely dedicated to the author’s library Shapeless, as is the implementation taken from his example.

Comments are closed.