Command Pipeline (pipes & filters) in Ruby

Anyone know of any generic implementation of a pipeline in ruby? That
is, one which takes a bunch of GoF Command objects, and strings them
together in the classical pipeline configuration.

Any advice on that?

I have a process with a lot of sequential processing, and think that a
pipeline of Command objects (not just Proc's) might be the way to do
it.

The downsides of pipelines:
1) You can't do selections (if) or sequences (loops). If you can
handle this, though, this becomes a virtue, as it keeps everything
crystal clear and simple. Witness the ever useful Unix command line
pipelines.

2) They don't encapsulate very well, as each stage totally overwrites
the previous ones. I'm not sure if I should just accept this, or try
to use some modification (append only pipeline, etc.).

Any experience or ideas on this appreciated.

eastcoastcoder@gmail.com wrote:

Anyone know of any generic implementation of a pipeline in ruby? That
is, one which takes a bunch of GoF Command objects, and strings them
together in the classical pipeline configuration.

Any advice on that?

Does Rake approach this?

Define each command as a task. Let Rake handle the chaining and dependency logic.

···

--
James Britt

“Design depends largely on constraints.”
  — Charles Eames

eastcoastcoder@gmail.com wrote:

Anyone know of any generic implementation of a pipeline in ruby? That
is, one which takes a bunch of GoF Command objects, and strings them
together in the classical pipeline configuration.

Any advice on that?

I have a process with a lot of sequential processing, and think that a
pipeline of Command objects (not just Proc's) might be the way to do
it.

The downsides of pipelines:
1) You can't do selections (if) or sequences (loops). If you can
handle this, though, this becomes a virtue, as it keeps everything
crystal clear and simple. Witness the ever useful Unix command line
pipelines.

2) They don't encapsulate very well, as each stage totally overwrites
the previous ones. I'm not sure if I should just accept this, or try
to use some modification (append only pipeline, etc.).

Any experience or ideas on this appreciated.

There are several ways you can do pipelining. Do you want concurrency
with that? Does every stage have a single output the next stage wants to
operate on? etc.

Probably the simplest thing you can do is to use #inject:

commands = [
  lambda {|x| x * 2},
  lambda {|x| 0 - x},
  lambda {|x| x + 10},
]

commands.inject(0) {|x,cmd| cmd}

=> 10

commands.inject(1) {|x,cmd| cmd}

=> 8

Kind regards

    robert

this handles any dag. i wrote it a long time ago

   http://codeforpeople.com/lib/ruby/flow/flow-2.0.0/

hth.

-a

···

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 eastcoastcoder@gmail.com wrote:

Anyone know of any generic implementation of a pipeline in ruby? That
is, one which takes a bunch of GoF Command objects, and strings them
together in the classical pipeline configuration.

Any advice on that?

I have a process with a lot of sequential processing, and think that a
pipeline of Command objects (not just Proc's) might be the way to do
it.

The downsides of pipelines:
1) You can't do selections (if) or sequences (loops). If you can
handle this, though, this becomes a virtue, as it keeps everything
crystal clear and simple. Witness the ever useful Unix command line
pipelines.

2) They don't encapsulate very well, as each stage totally overwrites
the previous ones. I'm not sure if I should just accept this, or try
to use some modification (append only pipeline, etc.).

Any experience or ideas on this appreciated.

--
happiness is not something ready-made. it comes from your own actions.
- h.h. the 14th dali lama

eastcoastcoder@gmail.com writes:

Anyone know of any generic implementation of a pipeline in ruby? That
is, one which takes a bunch of GoF Command objects, and strings them
together in the classical pipeline configuration.

Any advice on that?

I have a process with a lot of sequential processing, and think that a
pipeline of Command objects (not just Proc's) might be the way to do
it.

The downsides of pipelines:
1) You can't do selections (if) or sequences (loops). If you can
handle this, though, this becomes a virtue, as it keeps everything
crystal clear and simple. Witness the ever useful Unix command line
pipelines.

2) They don't encapsulate very well, as each stage totally overwrites
the previous ones. I'm not sure if I should just accept this, or try
to use some modification (append only pipeline, etc.).

Any experience or ideas on this appreciated.

A long, long, time ago, I can still remember:

http://kronavita.de/chris/data/pipeline_rdoc.html

···

--
Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> http://chneukirchen.org

That's neat, this might be handy too:

class Proc
  def |(other)
    proc{|*a| other.call(self.call(*a)) }
  end
end

I think I got the idea from something on Why's site, though I can't
find it now. Anyways if you could now do:

f = lambda {|x| x * 2} | lambda {|x| 0 - x} | lambda {|x| x + 10}

or more verbosely:

a = lambda {|x| x * 2}
b = lambda {|x| 0 - x}
c = lambda {|x| x + 10}

f = (a|b|c)

Think of it as unix pipes :slight_smile:
  .adam

Adam Sanderson wrote:

That's neat, this might be handy too:

class Proc
  def |(other)
    proc{|*a| other.call(self.call(*a)) }
  end
end

I think I got the idea from something on Why's site, though I can't
find it now. Anyways if you could now do:

f = lambda {|x| x * 2} | lambda {|x| 0 - x} | lambda {|x| x + 10}

or more verbosely:

a = lambda {|x| x * 2}
b = lambda {|x| 0 - x}
c = lambda {|x| x + 10}

f = (a|b|c)

Think of it as unix pipes :slight_smile:
  .adam

Depending on the number of processors you might even run into stack size
limits which won't happen with an #inject based solution (see my other
posting). (Ok, I know that I'm being obsessive about Enumerable#inject -
it was love at first sight. :-)) )

Although this looks nice, when associating Unix pipes you might be tempted
to expect those to execute concurrently which they don't.

We can combine both solutions:

class ProcChain
  def initialize(*procs) @chain = procs end
  def |(proc)
    @chain << proc
    self
  end
  def call(a)
    @chain.inject(a) {|x,pr| pr}
  end
  alias call
end

class Proc
  def |(proc)
    ProcChain.new(self, proc)
  end
end

irb(main):039:0> f = lambda {|x| x * 2} | lambda {|x| 0 - x} | lambda {|x|
x + 10}
=> #<ProcChain:0x4a6fed8 @chain=[#<Proc:0x04a70238@(irb):39>,
#<Proc:0x04a70148@(irb):39>, #<Proc:0x04a6ffc8@(irb):39>]>
irb(main):040:0> f[0]
=> 10
irb(main):041:0> f.call 1
=> 8

:-))

Kind regards

    robert