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Bio-EnsEMBL-112.0.0_57
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LICENSE

Copyright [1999-2015] Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute Copyright [2016-2024] EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

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NAME

Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator

SYNOPSIS

my $variation_iterator =
  $variation_adaptor->fetch_Iterator_by_VariationSet($1kg_set);

while ( my $variation = $variation_iterator->next ) {
  # operate on variation object
  print $variation->name, "\n";
}

DESCRIPTION

Some adaptor methods may return more objects than can fit in memory at once, in these cases 
you can fetch an iterator object instead of the usual array reference. The iterator object 
allows you to iterate over the set of objects (using the next() method) without loading the
entire set into memory at once. You can tell if an iterator is exhausted with the has_next()
method. The peek() method allows you to fetch the next object from the iterator without
advancing the iterator - this is useful if you want to check some property of en element in 
the set while leaving the iterator unchanged.

You can filter and transform an iterator in an analogous way to using map and grep on arrays 
using the provided map() and grep() methods. These methods return another iterator, and only 
perform the filtering and transformation on each element as it is requested, so again these 
can be used without loading the entire set into memory.

Iterators can be combined together with the append() method which merges together the 
iterator it is called on with the list of iterators passed in as arguments. This is 
somewhat analogous to concatenating arrays with the push function. append() returns a new 
iterator which iterates over each component iterator until it is exhausted before moving
on to the next iterator, in the order in which they are supplied to the method.

An iterator can be converted to an array (reference) containing all the elements in the 
set with the to_arrayref() method, but note that this array may consume a lot of memory if 
the set the iterator is iterating over is large and it is recommended that you do not call 
this method unless there is no way of working with each element at a time.

METHODS

new

Argument : either a coderef representing the iterator, in which case this 
           anonymous subroutine is assumed to return the next object in the 
           set when called and to return undef when the set is exhausted, 
           or an arrayref, in which case we return an iterator over this 
           array. If the argument is not defined then we return an 'empty' 
           iterator that immediately returns undef

Example :

  my @dbIDs = fetch_relevant_dbIDs();

  my $iterator = Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator->new(
      sub { return $self->fetch_by_dbID(shift @dbIDs) }
  );

  NB: this is a very simple example showing how to call the constructor
  that would be rather inefficient in practice, real examples should 
  probably be smarter about batching up queries to minimise trips to
  the database. See examples in the Variation API.

Description: Constructor, creates a new iterator object
Returntype : Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator instance
Exceptions : thrown if the supplied argument is not the expected 
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

_fetch_next_value_if_needed

Example    : $iterator->_fetch_next_value_if_needed
Description: Helper method used to fill the internal buffer with the next value of the iterator
Returntype : none
Exceptions : none
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

next

Example    : $obj = $iterator->next
Description: returns the next object from this iterator, or undef if the iterator is exhausted
Returntype : Object type will depend on what this iterator is iterating over
Exceptions : none
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

has_next

Example    : if ($iterator->has_next) { my $obj = $iterator->next }
Description: Boolean - true if this iterator has more elements to fetch, false when
             it is exhausted
Returntype : boolean
Exceptions : none
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

peek

Example    : $obj = $iterator->peek
Description: returns the next object from this iterator, or undef if the iterator is exhausted,
             much like next but does not advance the iterator (so the same object will be 
             returned on the following call to next or peek)
Returntype : Object type will depend on what this iterator is iterating over
Exceptions : none
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

grep

Example    : my $filtered_iterator = $original_iterator->grep(sub {$_->name =~ /^rs/});
Description: filter this iterator, returning another iterator
Argument   : a coderef which returns true if the element should be included in the
             filtered set, or false if the element should be filtered out. $_ will be 
             set locally to each element in turn so you should be able to write a block 
             in a similar way as for the perl grep function (although it will need to be 
             preceded with the sub keyword). Otherwise you can pass in a reference to a 
             subroutine which expects a single argument with the same behaviour.
Returntype : Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator
Exceptions : thrown if the argument is not a coderef
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

map

Example    : my $transformed_iterator = $original_iterator->map(sub {$_->name});
Description: transform the elements of this iterator, returning another iterator
Argument   : a coderef which returns the desired transformation of each element.
             $_ will be set locally set to each original element in turn so you 
             should be able to write a block in a similar way as for the perl map 
             function (although it will need to be preceded with the sub keyword). 
             Otherwise you can pass in a reference to a subroutine which expects a
             single argument with the same behaviour.
Returntype : Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator
Exceptions : thrown if the argument is not a coderef
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

each

Example    : $iterator->each(sub { print $_->name, "\n"; });
Description: Performs a full iteration of the current iterator instance.
Argument   : a coderef which returns the desired transformation of each element.
             $_ will be set locally set to each element.
Returntype : None
Exceptions : thrown if the argument is not a coderef
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

to_arrayref

Example    : my $arrayref = $iterator->to_arrayref;
Description: return a reference to an array containing all elements from the 
             iterator. This is created by simply iterating over the iterator 
             until it is exhausted and adding each element in turn to an array. 
             Note that this may consume a lot of memory for iterators over 
             large collections
Returntype : arrayref
Exceptions : none
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

append

Example    : my $combined_iterator = $iterator1->append($iterator2, $iterator3);
Description: return a new iterator that combines this iterator with the others
             passed as arguments, this new iterator will iterate over each
             component iterator (in the order supplied here) until it is 
             exhausted and then move on to the next iterator until all are
             exhausted
Argument   : an array of Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator objects
Returntype : Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator
Exceptions : thrown if any of the arguments are not iterators
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

take

Example    : my $limited_iterator = $iterator->take(5);
Description: return a new iterator that only iterates over the
             first n elements of this iterator
Argument   : a positive integer
Returntype : Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator
Exceptions : thrown if the argument is negative
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

skip

Example    : my $limited_iterator = $iterator->skip(5);
Description: skip over the first n elements of this iterator (and then return
             the same iterator for your method chaining convenience)
Argument   : a positive integer
Returntype : Bio::EnsEMBL::Utils::Iterator
Exceptions : thrown if the argument is negative
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental

reduce

Example    : my $tot_length = $iterator->reduce(sub { $_[0] + $_[1]->length }, 0);
Description: reduce this iterator with the provided coderef, using the (optional)
             second argument as the initial value of the accumulator
Argument[1]: a coderef that expects 2 arguments, the current accumulator
             value and the next element in the set, and returns the next
             accumulator value. Unless the optional second argument is
             provided the first accumulator value passed in will be the 
             first element in the set
Argument[2]: (optional) an initial value to use for the accumulator instead 
             of the first value of the set
Returntype : returntype of the coderef 
Exceptions : thrown if the argument is not a coderef
Caller     : general
Status     : Experimental