Generic zipper implementation in Erlang.
## Zippers: what are they good for?
Zippers let you traverse immutable data structures with ease and flexibility.
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## Usage
For a map tree structure like the following:
```erlang
Root = #{type => planet,
attrs => #{name => "Earth"},
children => [
#{type => continent,
attrs => #{name => "America"},
children => [
#{type => country,
attrs => #{name => "Argentina"},
children => []},
#{type => country,
attrs => #{name => "Brasil"},
children => []}
]
},
#{type => continent,
attrs => #{name => "Europe"},
children => [
#{type => country,
attrs => #{name => "Sweden"},
children => []},
#{type => country,
attrs => #{name => "England"},
children => []}
]
}
]
},
```
You can build a zipper by providing three simple functions:
- `IsBranchFun`: takes a node and returns `true` if it is a branch node or
`false` otherwise.
- `ChildrenFun`: takes a node and returns a list of its children.
- `MakeNodeFun`: takes a node and a list of children and returns a new node
containg the supplied list as children.
This is an example of how you would define a zipper and then use it to traverse
the map tree structure above:
```erlang
%% Create the zipper
IsBranchFun = fun
(#{children := [_ | _]}) -> true;
(_) -> false
end,
ChildrenFun = fun(Node) -> maps:get(children, Node) end,
MakeNodeFun = fun(Node, Children) -> Node#{children => Children} end,
Zipper = zipper:new(fun is_map/1, ChildrenFun, MakeNodefun, Root),
%% Traverse the zipper with next
Zipper1 = zipper:next(Zipper),
Zipper2 = zipper:next(Zipper),
%% Get the current zipper node
Argentina = zipper:node(Zipper2).
io:format("~p", [Argentina]),
%%= #{type => country,
%%= attrs => #{name => "Argentina"},
%%= children => []}
%% Go up and get the node
Zipper3 = zipper:up(Zipper2).
America = zipper:node(Zipper2).
io:format("~p", [America]),
%%= #{type => country,
%%= attrs => #{name => "America"},
%%= children => [#{...}, #{...}]}
```
## References
- [The Zipper, GERARD HUET](https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/huet-zipper.pdf)
- [clojure.zip](http://clojure.github.io/clojure/clojure.zip-api.html#clojure.zip/zipper)