Stream: helpdesk (published)

Topic: all but one function?

view this post on Zulip Kevin Bonham (May 20 2021 at 20:11):

Is there something like all(pred, collection) but that requires one false value? I'm thinking that all is like chaining and, any is chaining or, and I want something that's (sort of) chaining xor. A non-short circuiting version would just be something like 

julia> allbutone(f, collection) = length(collection) - sum(f, collection) == 1
allbutone (generic function with 1 method)

julia> allbutone(>(1), 1:10)
true

julia> allbutone(>(1), 0:10)
false

julia> allbutone(>(1), 2:10)
false

view this post on Zulip Kevin Bonham (May 20 2021 at 20:13):

I suppose the xor thing doesn't make sense, since another interpretation would be onlyone or something...

view this post on Zulip Adam non-jedi Beckmeyer (May 20 2021 at 21:34):

I'm relatively confident you'll need to just write the short-circuiting version yourself; this seems like a really special-purpose function. The short-circuiting version is only a few lines of code anyway.

view this post on Zulip Adam non-jedi Beckmeyer (May 20 2021 at 21:43):

The inverse (finding exactly 1 true) is slightly easier to write, and you can just pass
!f anyway:

function exactly_n(f, itr, n=1)
    count = 0
    for x in itr
        count += f(x)
        count > n && return false
    end
    return count == n
end

Note that depending on your input data, the version without short-circuiting might be much
faster.

view this post on Zulip Adam non-jedi Beckmeyer (May 20 2021 at 21:45):

For best performance you probably would want to check count > n after several iterations rather than every iteration (assuming f is relatively inexpensive).

view this post on Zulip Adam non-jedi Beckmeyer (May 20 2021 at 22:02):

(I wonder if Base should have some sort of generic short-circuiting reduction implementation :thinking: )

view this post on Zulip Mason Protter (May 21 2021 at 01:26):

Transducers.jl supports early termination through reduced, which is basically just short circuiting but more general.

If you want something that's not too 'transducery' though, you could write

julia> function short_circuit_reduce(f, op, itr; init, flag)
           state = init
           for x in itr
               state = op(state, f(x))
               state == flag && return state
           end
           state
       end;

Then, we just make version of & which will "forgive" us if we give it false input n times:

julia> mutable struct ForgivingAnd
           n::Int
       end

julia> (fga::ForgivingAnd)(p, q) = p & q || (fga.n -= 1) >= 0

Now, allbutone just needs to stick a ForgivingAnd(1) into short_circuit_reduce and check that it forgave exactly 1 false:

julia> function allbutone(f, itr)
           (&) = ForgivingAnd(1)
           short_circuit_reduce(f, &, itr; init=true, flag = false)
           (&).n == 0
       end

Then, we can check if it's working correctly:

julia> allbutone(>(1), 1:10)
true

julia> allbutone(>(1), 0:10)
false

julia> allbutone(>(1), 2:10)
false

view this post on Zulip Mason Protter (May 21 2021 at 02:39):

If you want to short circuit out every n iterations, you could do something like 

julia> function allbutone(f, itr; chunk_size=64)
           (&) = ForgivingAnd(1)
           short_circuit_reduce(f, &, itr; init=true, flag = false, chunk_size=chunk_size)
           (&).n == 0
       end

julia> function short_circuit_reduce(f, op, itr; init, flag, chunk_size::Int = 64)
           state = init
           for chunk in Iterators.partition(itr, chunk_size)
               for x in chunk
                   state = op(state, f(x))
               end
               state == flag && return state
           end
           state
       end

Then we can look at the performance implications on that for functions which have tight-loops like the one @Kevin Bonham was interested in, in the case where it never actually short circuits:

julia> for N in (10, 100, 1000, 10_000)
           itr = rand(1:1000, N)
           @show N
           for chunk_size in 2 .^ (1:2:10)
               print("  "); @show chunk_size
               print("  "); @btime allbutone(>(0), $itr; chunk_size=$chunk_size)
           end
           println()
       end
N = 10
  chunk_size = 2
    30.130 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 8
    22.942 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 32
    20.972 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 128
    20.993 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 512
    20.963 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)

N = 100
  chunk_size = 2
    212.223 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 8
    132.495 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 32
    135.200 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 128
    109.536 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 512
    109.535 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)

N = 1000
  chunk_size = 2
    1.976 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 8
    1.168 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 32
    1.263 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 128
    1.004 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 512
    943.423 ns (1 allocation: 16 bytes)

N = 10000
  chunk_size = 2
    19.669 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 8
    11.559 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 32
    12.510 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 128
    9.859 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)
  chunk_size = 512
    9.330 μs (1 allocation: 16 bytes)

view this post on Zulip Mason Protter (May 21 2021 at 02:40):

So there's real gains to be had here, likely because SIMD is being enabled.

view this post on Zulip Mason Protter (May 21 2021 at 02:40):

For a less generic version, you could make something screaming fast with LoopVectorization.jl of course.

view this post on Zulip Kevin Bonham (May 21 2021 at 10:56):

Thanks for the thorough explanations! It actually hadn't occurred to me that writing the naive short-circuit version might end up slower.

@Adam non-jedi Beckmeyer my first thought was basically your exactly_n, but counting falses instead of trues :wink:.

@Mason Protter I think I'm going to have to sit down and study your implementations with a cup of coffee :big_smile:. I understand how to use iterators, but the writing of them is still not intuitive.

Last updated: Oct 26 2025 at 04:40 UTC