org.roaringbitmap.longlong

Interface PeekableLongIterator

All Superinterfaces:

Cloneable, LongIterator

public interface PeekableLongIterator
extends LongIterator

Simple extension to the IntIterator interface. It allows you to "skip" values using the advanceIfNeeded method, and to look at the value without advancing (peekNext). This richer interface enables efficient algorithms over iterators of longs.

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
void	advanceIfNeeded(long minval) If needed, advance as long as the next value is smaller than minval The advanceIfNeeded method is used for performance reasons, to skip over unnecessary repeated calls to next.
PeekableLongIterator	clone() Creates a copy of the iterator.
long	peekNext() Look at the next value without advancing The peek is useful when working with several iterators at once.

Methods inherited from interface org.roaringbitmap.longlong.LongIterator

hasNext, next

Method Detail

advanceIfNeeded

void advanceIfNeeded(long minval)

If needed, advance as long as the next value is smaller than minval The advanceIfNeeded method is used for performance reasons, to skip over unnecessary repeated calls to next. Suppose for example that you wish to compute the intersection between an ordered list of longs (e.g., longs[] x = {1,4,5}) and a PeekableIntIterator. You might do it as follows...

     PeekableLongIterator j = // get an iterator
     long val = // first value from my other data structure
     j.advanceIfNeeded(val);
     while ( j.hasNext() ) {
       if(j.next() == val) {
         // ah! ah! val is in the intersection...
         // do something here
         val = // get next value?
       }
       j.advanceIfNeeded(val);
     }
     

The benefit of calling advanceIfNeeded is that each such call can be much faster than repeated calls to "next". The underlying implementation can "skip" over some data.

Parameters:

minval - threshold

peekNext

long peekNext()

Look at the next value without advancing The peek is useful when working with several iterators at once. Suppose that you have 100 iterators, and you want to compute their intersections without materializing the result. You might do it as follows...

    PriorityQueue pq = new PriorityQueue(100,
      new Comparator<PeekableIntIterator>() {
             public int compare(PeekableIntIterator a,
                                PeekableIntIterator b) {
                 return a.peek() - b.peek();
             }
         });
 
    //...  populate pq
    
    while(! pq.isEmpty() ) {
      // get iterator with a smallest value
      PeekableLongIterator pi = pq.poll();
      long x = pi.next(); // advance
      // do something with x
      if(pi.hasNext()) pq.add(pi)
    }
    

Notice how the peek method allows you to compare iterators in a way that the next method could not do.

Returns:

next value

clone

PeekableLongIterator clone()

Creates a copy of the iterator.

Specified by:

clone in interface LongIterator

Returns:

a clone of the current iterator