[erlang-questions] List to proplist?

[Ulf Wiger]

Ok, so you said you already knew that. (: - I didn't read too carefully there).

So, make it a recursive fun then, if the main problem is that you
don't want to create a new function:

F = fun([K,V|T], Recurse) -> [{K,V} | Recurse(T)];
          ([], _) -> [] end,
F(L, F).

I think most other solutions will be contrived and inefficient.

BR,
Ulf W

2008/10/20 Ulf Wiger <ulf@REDACTED>:
> Well, the obvious way to do it ought to be:
>
> to_proplist([K,V | T]) -> [{K,V} | to_proplist(T)];
> to_proplist([]) -> [].
>
> BR,
> Ulf W
>
> 2008/10/20 Edwin Fine <erlang-questions_efine@REDACTED>:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I was wondering what the most elegant and efficient way would be to take a
>> list containing an even number of elements and convert it into a proplist,
>> using only Erlang library functions? This is really a learning thing for me
>> (how to think in Erlang) rather than an urgent question, but it is based on
>> a real need (having a flat list of key/value pairs and wanting it in
>> proplist form).
>>
>> For example, the function would do this: f([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]) ->
>> [{1,2},{3,4},{5,6},{7,8}].
>>
>> I know it would be easy to write a pattern-matching-style function, but I
>> wanted to do it without having to define a new function, in as compact a way
>> as possible while still keeping it reasonably efficient. I thought there
>> might be a proplists:from_list/1 function, but I couldn't find one.
>>
>> The best I could come up with is this (it's ok to assume that there will be
>> an even number of elements in L):
>>
>>     element(1, lists:mapfoldl(fun(_,[X,Y|T]) -> {{X,Y}, T} end, L,
>> lists:seq(1, length(L) div 2))).
>>
>> It seems like a bit of a perversion of the idea of foldl, being used to
>> "unaccumulate". I'm also not really happy with having to generate another
>> list using lists:seq, especially if L is long, but I can't think of a better
>> way to drive the foldl part with the right number of elements. I thought of
>> splitting L in half for this, but what if L has large elements? Wouldn't I
>> be using much more memory than a simple list of integers, or would it
>> internally be a list of pointers to half of the elements of L? Actually,
>> that would almost always be bigger than a list of integers on a 64-bit
>> system...
>>
>> Is there a better way to do this given the stated constraints? If so, I'd
>> appreciate it if you'd share it with me.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Edwin Fine
>>
>>
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