10 CoffeeScript One Liners to Impress Your Friends

You may have read “10 Scala One Liners to Impress Your Friends” at Marcus Kazmierczak’s blog recently featured on HN. Although I don’t know Scala (or Java), it all looks quite nice, so I decided to impress my friends too - folks go from Java to Scala, we go from Javascript to CoffeeScript. Assume node.js as the environment for all examples.

  1. Multiply each item in a list by 2

Marcus starts by showing off the map function. We can do exactly the same using a range literal and an anonymous function:

[1..10].map (i) -> i*2

but we can also write the more expressive form

i * 2 for i in [1..10]

  1. Sum a list of numbers

Javascript (and CoffeeScript by extension) also has native map and reduce functions:

[1..1000].reduce (t, s) -> t + s

(reduce == reduceLeft, reduceRight is also available)

  1. Verify if word exists in string

Too easy since we have the some method. It returns true if any of the elements in the array satisfies the function:

wordList = ["coffeescript", "eko", "play framework", "and stuff", "falsy"]
tweet = "This is an example tweet talking about javascript and stuff."

wordList.some (word) -> ~tweet.indexOf word

This will return the matched words instead:

wordList.filter (word) -> ~tweet.indexOf word

~ is not a special operator in CoffeeScript, just a dirty trick. It is the bitwise NOT operator, which inverts the bits of it’s operand. In practice it equates to -x-1. Here it works on the basis that we want to check for an index greater than -1, and -(-1)-1 == 0 evaluates to false.

  1. Read in a File

Users of client-side javascript frameworks will be familiar with this idea:

fs.readFile 'data.txt', (err, data) -> fileText = data

You could also use the synchronous version:

fileText = fs.readFileSync('data.txt').toString()

In node.js land this is only acceptable for application start-up routines. You should use the async version in your code.

  1. Happy Birthday

First, a 1 to 1 mapping to the Scala version with a bit of string interpolation thrown in the mix:

[1..4].map (i) -> console.log "Happy Birthday " + (if i is 3 then "dear Robert" else "to You")

But it get’s better. This reads almost like pseudo-code:

console.log "Happy Birthday #{if i is 3 then "dear Robert" else "to You"}" for i in [1..4]

  1. Filter list of numbers

Filter a list of numbers into two categories. The literate way:

(if score > 60 then (passed or passed = []) else (failed or failed = [])).push score for score in [49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90]

(thanks @giacecco for shortening this)

And the functional way:

[passed, failed] = [49, 58, 76, 82, 88, 90].reduce ((p,c,i) -> p[+(c < 60)].push c; p), [[],[]]

  1. Fetch and Parse a XML web service

XML what? Haven’t heard of it. Let’s fetch a JSON instead, using the request library:

request.get { uri:'path/to/api.json', json: true }, (err, r, body) -> results = body

  1. Find minimum (or maximum) in a List

The apply function comes handy here. It allows you to call a function passing an array as the list of arguments: Math.max and Math.min both receive a variable number of arguments, i.e. Math.max 30, 10, 20 returns 30. Let’s put it to work with an array:

Math.max.apply @, [14, 35, -7, 46, 98] # 98
Math.min.apply @, [14, 35, -7, 46, 98] # -7

  1. Paralell Processing

Not there yet. You can create child processes on your own and communicate with them, or use the WebWorkers API implementation. Skipping over.

  1. Sieve of Eratosthenes

update: @dionyziz sent me this compact version:

primes = []
primes.push i for i in [2..100] when not (j for j in primes when i % j == 0).length

which we can then use for a real one-liner like the original:

(n) -> (p.push i for i in [2..n] when not (j for j in (p or p=[]) when i%j == 0)[0]) and n in p

or the somewhat more efficient

(n) -> (p.push i for i in [2..n] when !(p or p=[]).some((j) -> i%j is 0)) and n in p

  1. Bonus

Most readable fizzbuzz version you’ll ever see:

"#{if i%3 is 0 then 'fizz' else ''}#{if i%5 is 0 then 'buzz' else ''}" or i for i in [1..100]

edit: even simpler, but trickier, with a little hint by satyr:

['fizz' unless i%3] + ['buzz' unless i%5] or i for i in [1..100]

When you use the + operator on an Array, it converts it to a string. [].toString() is the same as [].join(','), which gives an empty string in case the array value is undefined or null. This also works in Javascript ([undefined] + "b" === "b").

Conclusions

Modern languages are amazingly expressive. I’m also surprised that some of the syntax in these map so closely to Scala, given they’re oceans apart.

You can learn more about CoffeeScript here, see a few more CoffeeScript snippets on rosettacode, and follow me on Twitter @ricardobeat.