Details
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Type:
Improvement
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Status: Won't Fix
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Resolution: Done
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Fix Version/s: None
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Component/s: utils
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Labels:None
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Story Points:1
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Epic Link:
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Sprint:AP S19-3, AP S19-4
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Team:Alert Production
Description
In the review to DM-16535, John Parejko requested that the flatten function, which converts an iterable of mixed scalars and iterables to a list of scalars, be made a public function in utils so that it could be used elsewhere.
Given that "flatten" is a very common name in the Stack, perhaps we should choose a different name to avoid confusion.
Attachments
Activity
Good question. My first thought is returning a sequence (list is the simplest). I suspect, but am not certain, the situations where we would like to use this would not involve much memory pressure.
I would ask for broader input (say, slack#dm) on that question.
Hi John Parejko, can you please review this? Thanks!
Krzysztof Findeisen
added a comment - Hi John Parejko , can you please review this? Thanks! See comments (from me and others) on the PR: at least fix the infinite string iteration. It may well be worth making it use a generator; see my stackoverflow link.
As recommended in the review, I decided not to merge these changes because lsst.verify.gen2tasks is the only client. If somebody else (e.g., John Parejko) finds they also need this functionality, then we can create a new ticket and re-submit the commits there.
(Before closing the PR I both fixed the infinite recursion on strings, and explicitly disallowed mapping types. Many thanks for catching those bugs!)
Krzysztof Findeisen
added a comment - - edited As recommended in the review, I decided not to merge these changes because lsst.verify.gen2tasks is the only client. If somebody else (e.g., John Parejko ) finds they also need this functionality, then we can create a new ticket and re-submit the commits there.
(Before closing the PR I both fixed the infinite recursion on strings, and explicitly disallowed mapping types. Many thanks for catching those bugs!) 
Question for John Parejko: should lsst.utils.flatten stick to returning a sequence, or would making it a generator be useful?