Suggestion: New table iterators

[Bjorn Gustavsson]

I suggest that we add

	ets:foldl(Fun, Acc, Table)
	ets:foldr(Fun, Acc, Table)

	dets:foldl(Fun, Acc, Table)
	dets:foldr(Fun, Acc, Table)

	mnesia:foldl(Fun, Acc, Table)
	mnesia:foldr(Fun, Acc, Table)

for iteration over tables.

The difference between the foldl/3 and foldr/3 is the order in which the
table elements are accessed. foldl/3 accesses from the first element to
the last, while foldr/3 accesses the element from last to to first.
Both functions are tail-recursive. The order is important only for ordered tables.

There is no need for map/2 or filter/3 functions, because they can easily
be simulated with the fold functions:

	my_tab2list(T) ->
		ets:foldr(fun (E, Acc) -> [E|Acc] end, [], T).

Besides, the reasonable semantics for map/2 and filter/3 would be that
they modified the ets table or returned a new ets table, something we
we are no prepared to implement now, but might be implemented in a future version.

Any comments?

/Björn
-- 
Björn Gustavsson            Ericsson Utvecklings AB
bjorn@REDACTED      ÄT2/UAB/F/P
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