On Fri, Dec 24, 2010 at 12:06 AM, Benny Tsai <benny.t...@gmail.com> wrote: >> You're welcome. Sorry I couldn't be of greater help. If you want, I >> could throw together a quickie macro for grabbing a few items from >> either end of a seq. > Sure, that would be cool :)
OK, here goes ... (defmacro ends [[[firsts mid lasts] sequence] & body] (let [nl (count lasts)] `(let [s# (seq ~sequence) [...@firsts & ~mid] (drop-last ~nl s#) ~lasts (drop (- (count s#) ~nl) s#)] ~...@body))) user=> (ends [[[a b c] d [e f]] (range 10)] [a b c d e f]) [0 1 2 (3 4 5 6 7) 8 9] As you can see, it expects a binding vector of two items, the second a seqable and the first a vector of first, mid, lasts. Firsts and lasts are vectors of symbols, and mid is a symbol. The first items of the seq are assigned to the firsts symbols, in order; the last items to the lasts, in order; and whatever's left over in the middle to mid. If the sequence is short enough, odd things happen: user=> (ends [[[a b c] d [e f]] (range 5)] [a b c d e f]) [0 1 2 nil 3 4] Here the firsts and lasts exhaust the seq; mid ends up nil. Since nil can generally stand in for an empty seq this is OK. user=> (ends [[[a b c] d [e f]] (range 4)] [a b c d e f]) [0 1 nil nil 2 3] This is a bit more bothersome. [0 1 2 nil 2 3] might be preferred here. If so the macro needs a slight modification. What do you say? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en