How to implement breadth first search in Scala with FP

Question

I'm wondering how to implement a Breadth-first search in Scala, using functional programing.

Here is my first, impure, code :

  def bfs[S](init: S, f: S => Seq[S], finalS: S => Boolean): Option[S] = {
    val queue = collection.mutable.Queue[S]()

    queue += init
    var found: Option[S] = None

    while (!queue.isEmpty && found.isEmpty) {
      val next = queue.dequeue()
      if (finalS(next)) {
        found = Some(next)
      } else {
        f(next).foreach { s => queue += s }
      }
    }
    found
  }

Although I use only local mutability (a var and a mutable Queue), it's not purely functional.

I come up with another version :

  case class State[S](q: Queue[S], cur: S)

  def update[S](f: S => Seq[S])(s: State[S]) : State[S] = {
    val (i, q2) = s.q.dequeue
    val q3 = f(i).foldLeft(q2) { case (acc, i) => acc.enqueue(i)}
    State(q3, i)
  }

  def bfs2[S](init: S, f: S => Seq[S], finalS: S => Boolean): Option[S] = {
    val s = loop(State[S](Queue[S]().enqueue(init), init), update(f) _, (s: State[S]) => s.q.isEmpty || finalS(s.cur))
    Some(s.cur)
  }

  def loop[A](a: A, f: A => A, cond: A => Boolean) : A =
    if (cond(a)) a else loop(f(a), f, cond)

Is there a better way for both solutions ? Is it possible to use cats/scalaz to remove some boilerplate ?

Answer 1

One nice thing about functional programming is you can take advantage of laziness to separate the traversal of your data structure from the searching part. This makes for very reusable, single responsibility code:

import scala.collection.immutable.Queue

def breadth_first_traverse[Node](node: Node, f: Node => Queue[Node]): Stream[Node] = {
  def recurse(q: Queue[Node]): Stream[Node] = {
    if (q.isEmpty) {
      Stream.Empty
    } else {
      val (node, tail) = q.dequeue
      node #:: recurse(tail ++ f(node))
    }
  }

  node #:: recurse(Queue.empty ++ f(node))
}

Now you can do a BFS by breadth_first_traverse(root, f) find (_ == 16) or use any other function in the Stream class to do useful ad hoc "queries" on a lazy breadth-first flattened Stream of your tree.

Answer 2

Building upon the answer given by Karl Bielefeldt, here's another solution (that doesn't involve any queue and just uses Streams).

def bfs[T](s: Stream[T], f: T => Stream[T]): Stream[T] = {
    if (s.isEmpty) s
    else s.head #:: bfs(s.tail append f(s.head), f)
}

Answer 3

This is untested, but i think works:

  def bfs[S](init: S, f: S => Seq[S], finalS: S => Boolean): Option[S] = {
    def bfshelper(q: Seq[S], f: S => Seq[S], finalS: S => Boolean): Option[S] = q match {
      case Seq()               => None
      case h +: t if finalS(h) => Some(h)
      case h +: t              => bfshelper(t ++ f(h), f, finalS)
    }
    bfshelper(Seq(init), f, finalS)
  }

the trick is to keep a Seq of what remains to be checked, and, if the current element isn't a match, call ourselves with the remains of what we had to check with the children of this node appended