README.md

elm-memo

Most basic memoization functionality.

If you have a function fun : Int -> Int -> Bool that is expensive to compute, and you know you are going to repeatedly need values of that function with first argument 100 and second argument either between 1 and 10 or between 30 and 40, you can do:

memoized : Int -> Maybe Bool
memoized =
    memo (fun 100) (List.range 1 10 ++ List.range 30 40)

and later use memoized 5, memoized 35, memoized 35, memoized 5, memoized 35, etc.

No recomputation will take place, i.e., each of fun 100 5 and fun 100 35 will be computed only once. Also, only results that are actually needed will be computed, so in the example only fun 100 5 and fun 100 35 will be computed at all, no fun 100 1 or any others in the range.

The return value is Nothing if the argument provided is not in the range declared when memo was called. One way for a client of the library to handle this case is as follows:

memoFallback : (comparable -> b) -> List comparable -> comparable -> b
memoFallback fun args =
    let
        memoized =
            memo fun args
    in
        \arg ->
            case memoized arg of
                Just val ->
                    val

                Nothing ->
                    fun arg

But other ways are reasonable as well (depending on scenario), e.g., replacing fun arg in the last line by a conscious call to Debug.crash.

Here is a fun use of memoization to avoid recursion explosion:

fibonacci : Int -> Int
fibonacci n =
    let
        mfib =
            memoFallback fib (List.range 2 (n - 2))

        fib n =
            if n < 2 then
                1
            else
                mfib (n - 1) + mfib (n - 2)
    in
        fib n