Best way to turn a Lists of Eithers into an Either of Lists?

user_436820 0
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I have some code like the below, where I have a list of Eithers, and I want to turn it into an Either of Lists ... in particular (in this case), if there are any Lefts in the list, then I return a Left of the list of them, otherwise I return a Right of the list of the rights.

val maybe: List[Either[String, Int]] = getMaybe
val (strings, ints) = maybe.partition(_.isLeft)
strings.map(_.left.get) match {
  case Nil => Right(ints.map(_.right.get))
  case stringList => Left(stringList)
}

Calling get always makes me feel like I must be missing something.

Is there a more idiomatic way to do this?

either scala
9 Answers

Starting in Scala 2.13, most collections are now provided with a partitionMap method which partitions elements based on a function returning either Right or Left.

In our case, we don't even need a function that transforms our input into Right or Left to define the partitioning since we already have Rights and Lefts. Thus a simple use of identity!

Then it's just a matter of matching the resulting partitioned tuple of lefts and rights based on whether or not there are any lefts:

eithers.partitionMap(identity) match {
  case (Nil, rights) => Right(rights)
  case (lefts, _)    => Left(lefts)
}
// * List[Either[String, Int]] = List(Right(3), Left("error x"), Right(7))
//         => Either[List[String],List[Int]] = Left(List(error x))
// * List[Either[String, Int]] = List(Right(3), Right(7))
//         => Either[List[String],List[Int]] = Right(List(3, 7))

For the understanding of partitionMap here is the result of the intermediate step:

List(Right(3), Left("error x"), Right(7)).partitionMap(identity)
// (List[String], List[Int]) = (List(error x), List(3, 7))
user_92971440

Isn't a more elegant way?

  def flatten[E,A](es: List[Either[E,A]]): Either[E,List[A]] = {
    @tailrec
    def go(tail: List[Either[E,A]], acc: List[A]): Either[E,List[A]] = tail match {
      case Nil  => Right(acc)
      case h::t => h match {
        case Left(e)  => Left(e)
        case Right(a) => go(t, a :: acc)
      }
    }
    go(es, Nil) map { _ reverse }
  }
  • tail recursion
  • one pass, assuming the a :: acc is a bullet-fast
  • but still, reverse in the end
  • partitionMap, is probably faster, because of internal implementation based on builder
  • but this one is the lasy. You will get Left immediately.
user_68960670

To extract Lefts and Rights separately:

val data: List[Either[String, Int]] = List(
  Right(1), 
  Left("Error #1"), 
  Right(42), 
  Left("Error #2")
)


val numbers: List[Int] = data.collect { case Right(value) => value }
val errors: List[String] = data.collect { case Left(error) => error }


println(numbers) // List(1, 42)
println(errors)  // List(Error #1, Error #2)
user_6854100
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