2 min read

Looping in Elixir

Examine a for loop in JavaScript: 

function lameLoopingCountdown (times) {
  for (var i = times; i > 0; i = i - 1 ){
    console.log(i)
  }
  console.log("boom")
} 

 

This loop makes two assumptions about mutability:

1. i is mutable

The loop ends when it is no longer true that i > 0. This assumes that i is currently greater than 0, and it will not be greater than 0 at some point in the future. Otherwise, the loop would go on forever.

2. i is mutable

i is being decremented by 1 every time around the loop. This is of course only possible if i is mutable. It really assumed one thing, but in two ways.

 

How then shall we loop? Recursion

 

defmodule BeginnersRecursion do
  def radRecursiveCountdown(times) do
    if times <= 0 do #base case, or middle chunk of for loop head, end of loop
      IO.inspect "boom"
    else
      IO.inspect(times) # operation, or body of for loop
      radRecursiveCountdown(times - 1) # the mechanism of looping
    end
  end
end

 

JavaScript can do the above, but Elixir offers a nice way to clean up recursion with multiple function heads.

 

defmodule BeginnersRecursion do
  def radRecursiveCountdown(0) do
    IO.inspect "boom" # base case, end of loop
  end
 
  def radRecursiveCountdown(times) do
    IO.inspect(times) # operation, or body of for loop
    radRecursiveCountdown(times - 1) # the mechanism of looping
  end
end

 

TLDR, To transform a loop into a multi-headed recursive Elixir function:

1. Extract termination condition of loop into a function head that executes your base case
( i.e. what happens when i is no longer > 0 )
2. Create another function head to perform the body of the loop
3. End the body of the loop with a recursive call, passing the result of the incrementing operation ( i.e. i – 1 ) as the argument.

 

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