Iterator Helpers

Proposal

A proposal for several interfaces that will help with general usage and consumption of iterators in ECMAScript. Many libraries and languages already provide these interfaces.

This proposal is at Stage 2 of The TC39 Process.

See DETAILS.md for details on semantics decisions.

See this proposal rendered here

Example usage

function* naturals() {
  let i = 0;
  while (true) {
    yield i;
    i += 1;
  }
}

const evens = naturals()
  .filter((n) => n % 2 === 0);

for (const even of evens) {
  console.log(even, 'is an even number');
}

const MyIteratorPrototype = {
  next() {},
  throw() {},
  return() {},

  // but we don't properly implement %IteratorPrototype%!!!
};

// Previously...
// Object.setPrototypeOf(MyIteratorPrototype,
//   Object.getPrototypeOf(Object.getPrototypeOf([][Symbol.iterator]())));

Object.setPrototypeOf(MyIteratorPrototype, Iterator.prototype);

class ObligatoryCryptocurrencyReference extends Component {
  componentWillMount() {
    const items = ticker() // returns async iterator
      .map((c) => createElement('h2', null, `${c.name}: ${c.price}`))
      .take(5) // only consume 5 items of a potentially infinite iterator
      .toArray() // greedily transform async iterator into array
      .then((data) => this.setState({ data }));
  }

  render() {
    return createElement('div', null, this.state.data);
  }
}

Why not use Array.from + Array.prototype methods?

All of these methods (except for reduce and toArray) are lazy. They will only consume the iterator when they need the next item from it. Especially for iterators that never end, this is key. Without generic support for any form of iterator, different iterators have to be handled differently.

Prior Art

• https://www.npmjs.com/package/itertools
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/lodash
• https://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html
• https://docs.rs/itertools/
• https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/iter/trait.Iterator.html
• https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_66_0/libs/iterator/doc/index.html
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.linq.enumerable
• https://github.com/ReactiveX/IxJS

Note: The method names are combined, such as toArray and collect.