Clojure supports advanced destructure features. In a previous post we learned about destructuring maps, but we can also destructure vectors, list and sequences in Clojure using positional destructuring. We can define symbols for positions in the sequence to assign the value at a certain position to the symbol. The first symbol in the destructure vector gets the value of the first element in the sequence, the second symbol the value of the second element and so on. To get the remaining elements from the sequence without assigning them to specific symbols we can use & followed by a symbol. Then all remaining elements are assigned as sequence the symbol. Finally we can use :as to get the original vector, list or sequence.

The folowing examples show several destructure definitions for different type of collections and sequences:

(ns mrhaki.lang.destruct-seq
  (:require [clojure.test :refer [is]]))

(def items ["mrhaki" "Hubert Klein Ikkink" "Tilburg"])

;; Elements from the items vector are positionally
;; destructured to symbols.
(let [[alias name city] items]
  (is (= "mrhaki" alias))
  (is (= "Hubert Klein Ikkink" name))
  (is (= "Tilburg" city)))

;; When we define a symbol but there are no elements
;; to assign a value, the symbol will be nil.
(let [[alias name city country] items]
  (is (nil? country)))

;; When we don't need the destructured symbol we can
;; use the underscore to indicate this. But any name will do.
(let [[username _ city] items]
  (is (= "mrhaki lives in Tilburg"
         (str username " lives in " city))))

;; We can destructure sequences just like vectors.
(def coords '(29.20090, 12.90391))

(let [[x y] coords]
  (is (= 29.20090 x))
  (is (= 12.90391 y)))

(let [[first-letter _ third-letter] "mrhaki"]
  (is (= \m first-letter))
  (is (= \h third-letter)))


;; We can nest our destructure definitions.
(def currencies [[42 "EUR"] [50 "USD"]])

;; We want the second value of the first element and
;; the first value of the second element.
(let [[[_ currency] [amount _]] currencies]
  (is (= "EUR" currency))
  (is (= 50 amount)))

;; Example sequence with fruit names.
(def basket '("Apple" "Pear" "Banana" "Grapes" "Lemon"))

;; We can use & to assign all remaining not-yet
;; destructured element to a sequence.
(let [[first second & rest] basket]
  (is (= "Apple" first))
  (is (= "Pear" second))
  (is (= ["Banana" "Grapes" "Lemon"] rest)))

;; We can use :as to get the original sequence.
(let [[first _ third :as fruits] basket]
  (is (= "Apple" first))
  (is (= "Banana" third))
  (is (= "APBGL" (apply str (map #(.charAt % 0) fruits)))))


;; Use destructure in function parameter to
;; destructure the argument value when invoked.
(defn summary
  [[first second :as all]]
  (str first ", " second " and " (- (count all) 2) " more fruit names."))

(is (= "Apple, Pear and 3 more fruit names."
       (summary basket)))

Written with Clojure 1.10.1.

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