Hamster

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Efficient, immutable, and thread-safe collection classes for Ruby.

Hamster started out as an implementation of Hash Array Mapped Tries for Ruby. It has since expanded to implementations of other Persistent Data Structures like Set, List, Stack, Queue, and Vector.

Hamster collections are immutable. Whenever you modify a Hamster collection, the original is preserved and a modified copy is returned. This makes them inherently thread-safe and sharable. For an interesting perspective on why immutability itself is inherently a good thing, you might like to take a look at Matthias Felleisen"s Function Objects presentation.

Hamster collection classes remain space efficient by making use of some very well understood and very simple techniques that enable sharing between copies.

Hamster collections are almost always closed under a given operation. That is, whereas Ruby"s collection methods always return arrays, Hamster collections will return an instance of the same class wherever possible.

And lastly, Hamster lists are lazy -- where Ruby"s language constructs permit -- making it possible to, among other things, process "infinitely large" lists. (Note: Ruby 1.9 supports a form of laziness using Enumerator. However, they"re implemented using Fibers which unfortunately can"t be shared across threads.)

Hamster started out as a spike to prove a point and has since morphed into something I actually use. My primary concern has been to round out the functionality with good test coverage and clean, readable code.

Performance is pretty good -- especially with lazy lists -- but there are some things which may blow the stack due to a lack of Tail-Call-Optimisation in Ruby.

Documentation is sparse but I've tried as best I can to write specs that read as documentation. I've also tried to alias methods as their Enumerable equivalents where possible to ease code migration.

Contact

• GitHub: http://github.com/harukizaemon/hamster
• RubyGems: https://rubygems.org/gems/hamster

Using

Most Hamster classes support an API that resembles their standard library counterpart with the caveat that any modification returns a new instance.

Once installed, all that remains is to make the collection classes available in your code:

require "hamster"

Or if you prefer to only pull in certain collection types:

require "hamster/list"
require "hamster/stack"
require "hamster/queue"
require "hamster/hash"
require "hamster/set"
require "hamster/vector"

Hash

Constructing a Hamster Hash is almost as simple as a regular one:

person = Hamster.hash(:name => "Simon", :gender => :male)
  # => {:name => "Simon", :gender => :male}

Accessing the contents will be familiar to you:

person[:name]
  # => "Simon"
person.get(:gender)
  # => :male

Updating the contents is a little different than you are used to:

friend = person.put(:name, "James")
  # => {:name => "James", :gender => :male}
person
  # => {:name => "Simon", :gender => :male}
friend[:name]
  # => "James"
person[:name]
  # => "Simon"

As you can see, updating the hash returned a copy leaving the original intact. Similarly, deleting a key returns yet another copy:

male = person.delete(:name)
  # => {:gender => :male}
person
  # => {:name => "Simon", :gender => :male}
male.key?(:name)
  # => false
person.key?(:name)
  # => true

Hamster's Hash doesn't provide an assignment (Hash#[]=) method. The reason for this is simple yet irritating: Ruby assignment methods always return the assigned value, no matter what the method itself returns. For example:

counters = Hamster.hash(:odds => 0, :evens => 0)
counters[:odds] += 1
  # => 1

Because of this, the returned copy would be lost thus making the construct useless. Instead Hash#put accepts a block instead of an explicit value so we can still do something similar:

counters.put(:odds) { |value| value + 1 }
  # => {:odds => 1, :evens => 0}

Or more succinctly:

counters.put(:odds, &:next)
  # => {:odds => 1, :evens => 0}

List

Hamster List have a head -- the value of the item at the head of the list -- and a tail -- containing the remaining items:

list = Hamster.list(1, 2, 3)
list.head
  # => 1
list.tail
  # => Hamster.list(2, 3)

To add to a list, you use List#cons:

original = Hamster.list(1, 2, 3)
copy = original.cons(0)
  # => Hamster.list(0, 1, 2, 3)

Notice how modifying a list actually returns a new list. That's because Hamster List are immutable. Thankfully, just like Hamster Set and Hash, they're also very efficient at making copies!

List is, where possible, lazy. That is, it tries to defer processing items until absolutely necessary. For example, given a crude function to detect prime numbers:

def prime?(number)
  2.upto(Math.sqrt(number).round) do |integer|
    return false if (number % integer).zero?
  end
  true
end

The following code will only call #prime? as many times as necessary to generate the first 3 prime numbers between 10,000 and 1,000,000:

Hamster.interval(10_000, 1_000_000).filter do |number|
  prime?(number)
end.take(3)
  # => 0.0009s

Compare that to the conventional equivalent which needs to calculate all possible values in the range before taking the first three:

(10000..1000000).select do |number|
  prime?(number)
end.take(3)
  # => 10s

Besides Hamster.list there are other ways to construct lists:

• Hamster.interval(from, to) creates a lazy list equivalent to a list containing all the values between from and to without actually creating a list that big.

• Hamster.stream { ... } allows you to creates infinite lists. Each time a new value is required, the supplied block is called. To generate a list of integers you could do:

  count = 0
  Hamster.stream { count += 1 }

• Hamster.repeat(x) creates an infinite list with x the value for every element.

• Hamster.replicate(n, x) creates a list of size n with x the value for every element.

• Hamster.iterate(x) { |x| ... } creates an infinite list where the first item is calculated by applying the block on the initial argument, the second item by applying the function on the previous result and so on. For example, a simpler way to generate a list of integers would be:

  Hamster.iterate(1) { |i| i + 1 }

  or even more succinctly:

  Hamster.iterate(1, &:next)

You also get Enumerable#to_list> so you can slowly transition from built-in collection classes to Hamster.

And finally, you get IO#to_list allowing you to lazily processes huge files. For example, imagine the following code to process a 100MB file:

File.open("my_100_mb_file.txt") do |file|
  lines = []
  file.each_line do |line|
    break if lines.size == 10
    lines << line.chomp.downcase.reverse
  end
end

How many times/how long did you read the code before it became apparent what the code actually did? Now compare that to the following:

File.open("my_100_mb_file.txt") do |file|
  file.map(&:chomp).map(&:downcase).map(&:reverse).take(10)
end

Unfortunately, though the second example reads nicely, it takes around 13 seconds to run (compared with 0.033 seconds for the first) even though we're only interested in the first 10 lines! However, using a little #to_list magic, we can get the running time back down to 0.033 seconds!

File.open("my_100_mb_file.txt") do |file|
  file.to_list.map(&:chomp).map(&:downcase).map(&:reverse).take(10)
end

How is this even possible? It's possible because IO#to_list creates a lazy list whereby each line is only ever read and processed as needed, in effect converting it to the first example without all the syntactic, imperative, noise.

Installing

Add this line to your application"s Gemfile:

gem "hamster", "~> 1.0"

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install hamster

FAQ

But I still don't understand why I should care?

As mentioned earlier, persistent data structures perform a copy whenever they are modified meaning there is never any chance that two threads could be modifying the same instance at any one time. And, because they are very efficient copies, you don't need to worry about using up gobs of memory in the process.

Even if threading isn't a concern, because they're immutable, you can pass them around between objects, methods, and functions in the same thread and never worry about data corruption; no more defensive calls to Object#dup!

What's the downside--there's always a downside?

There's a potential performance hit when compared with MRI's built-in, native, hand-crafted C-code implementation of Hash.

For example:

hash = Hamster.hash
(1..10000).each { |i| hash = hash.put(i, i) }
  # => 0.05s
(1..10000).each { |i| hash.get(i) }
  # => 0.008s

vs.

hash = {}
(1..10000).each { |i| hash[i] = i }
  # => 0.004s
(1..10000).each { |i| hash[i] }
  # => 0.001s

The previous comparison wasn't really fair. Sure, if all you want to do is replace your existing uses of Hash in single- threaded environments then don't even bother. However, if you need something that can be used efficiently in concurrent environments where multiple threads are accessing--reading AND writing--the contents things get much better.

A more realistic comparison might look like:

hash = Hamster.hash
(1..10000).each { |i| hash = hash.put(i, i) }
  # => 0.05s
(1..10000).each { |i| hash.get(i) }
  # => 0.008s

versus

hash = {}
(1..10000).each { |i| hash = hash.dup; hash[i] = i }
  # => 19.8s

(1..10000).each { |i| hash[i] }
  # => 0.001s

What's even better -- or worse depending on your perspective -- is that after all that, the native Hash version still isn't thread-safe and still requires some synchronization around it slowing it down even further.

The Hamster version on the other hand was unchanged from the original whilst remaining inherently thread-safe, and 3 orders of magnitude faster.

You still need synchronisation so why bother with the copying?

Well, I could show you one but I'd have to re-write/wrap most Hash methods to make them generic, or at the very least write some application-specific code that synchronized using a Mutex and ... well ... it's hard, I always make mistakes, I always end up with weird edge cases and race conditions so, I'll leave that as an exercise for you :)

And don't forget that even if threading isn't a concern for you, the safety provided by immutability alone is worth it, not to mention the lazy implementations.

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am "Add some feature")
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

Licensing

Copyright (c) 2009-2010 Simon Harris

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.