Tag: List::Util

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plate of eggs and hash browns

This month I start­ed a new job at Alert Logic, a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty provider with Perl (among many oth­er things) at its beat­ing heart. I’ve been learn­ing a lot, and part of the process has been under­stand­ing the APIs in the code base. To that end, I’ve been writ­ing small test scripts to tease apart data struc­tures, using Perl array-​processing, list-​processing, and hash- (i.e., asso­cia­tive array)-processing func­tions.

I’ve cov­ered map, grep, and friends a cou­ple times before. Most recent­ly, I described using List::Util’s any func­tion to check if a con­di­tion is true for any item in a list. In the sim­plest case, you can use it to check to see if a giv­en val­ue is in the list at all:

use feature 'say';
use List::Util 'any';
my @colors =
  qw(red orange yellow green blue indigo violet);
say 'matched' if any { /^red$/ } @colors;

However, if you’re going to be doing this a lot with arbi­trary strings, Perl FAQ sec­tion 4 advis­es turn­ing the array into the keys of a hash and then check­ing for mem­ber­ship there. For exam­ple, here’s a sim­ple script to check if the col­ors input (either from the key­board or from files passed as argu­ments) are in the rainbow:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use v5.22; # introduced <<>> for safe opening of arguments
use warnings;
 
my %in_colors = map {$_ => 1}
  qw(red orange yellow green blue indigo violet);

while (<<>>) {
  chomp;
  say "$_ is in the rainbow" if $in_colors{$_};
}

List::Util has a bunch of func­tions for pro­cess­ing lists of pairs that I’ve found use­ful when paw­ing through hash­es. pairgrep, for exam­ple, acts just like grep but instead assigns $a and $b to each key and val­ue passed in and returns the result­ing pairs that match. I’ve used it as a quick way to search for hash entries match­ing cer­tain val­ue conditions:

use List::Util 'pairgrep';
my %numbers = (zero => 0, one => 1, two => 2, three => 3);
my %odds = pairgrep {$b % 2} %numbers;

Sure, you could do this by invok­ing a mix of plain grep, keys, and a hash slice, but it’s nois­i­er and more repetitive:

use v5.20; # for key/value hash slice 
my %odds = %numbers{grep {$numbers{$_} % 2} keys %numbers};

pairgrep​’s com­piled C‑based XS code can also be faster, as evi­denced by this Benchmark script that works through a hash made of the Unix words file (479,828 entries on my machine):

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use v5.20;
use warnings;
use List::Util 'pairgrep';
use Benchmark 'cmpthese';

my (%words, $count);
open my $fh, '<', '/usr/share/dict/words'
  or die "can't open words: $!";
while (<$fh>) {
  chomp;
  $words{$_} = $count++;
}
close $fh;

cmpthese(100, {
  grep => sub {
    my %odds = %words{grep {$words{$_} % 2} keys %words};
  },
  pairgrep => sub {
    my %odds = pairgrep {$b % 2} %words;
  },
} );

Benchmark out­put:

           Rate     grep pairgrep
grep     1.47/s       --     -20%
pairgrep 1.84/s      25%       --

In gen­er­al, I urge you to work through the Perl doc­u­men­ta­tion​’s tuto­ri­als on ref­er­ences, lists of lists, the data struc­tures cook­book, and the FAQs on array and hash manip­u­la­tion. Then dip into the var­i­ous list-​processing mod­ules (espe­cial­ly the includ­ed List::Util and CPAN’s List::SomeUtils) for ready-​made func­tions for com­mon oper­a­tions. You’ll find a wealth of tech­niques for cre­at­ing, man­ag­ing, and pro­cess­ing the data struc­tures that your pro­grams need.

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woman looking at the map

Six months ago I gave an overview of Perl’s list pro­cess­ing fun­da­men­tals, briefly describ­ing what lists are and then intro­duc­ing the built-​in map and grep func­tions for trans­form­ing and fil­ter­ing them. Later on, I com­piled a list (how appro­pri­ate) of list pro­cess­ing mod­ules avail­able via CPAN, not­ing there’s some con­fus­ing dupli­ca­tion of effort. But you’re a busy devel­op­er, and you just want to know the Right Thing To Do™ when faced with a list pro­cess­ing challenge.

First, some cred­it is due: these are all restate­ments of sev­er­al Perl::Critic poli­cies which in turn cod­i­fy stan­dards described in Damian Conway’s Perl Best Practices (2005). I’ve repeat­ed­ly rec­om­mend­ed the lat­ter as a start­ing point for higher-​quality Perl devel­op­ment. Over the years these prac­tices con­tin­ue to be re-​evaluated (includ­ing by the author him­self) and var­i­ous authors release new pol­i­cy mod­ules, but perlcritic remains a great tool for ensur­ing you (and your team or oth­er con­trib­u­tors) main­tain a con­sis­tent high stan­dard in your code.

With that said, on to the recommendations!

Don’t use grep to check if any list elements match

It might sound weird to lead off by rec­om­mend­ing not to use grep, but some­times it’s not the right tool for the job. If you’ve got a list and want to deter­mine if a con­di­tion match­es any item in it, you might try:

if (grep { some_condition($_) } @my_list) {
    ... # don't do this!
}

Yes, this works because (in scalar con­text) grep returns the num­ber of match­es found, but it’s waste­ful, check­ing every ele­ment of @my_list (which could be lengthy) before final­ly pro­vid­ing a result. Use the stan­dard List::Util module’s any func­tion, which imme­di­ate­ly returns (“short-​circuits”) on the first match:

use List::Util 1.33 qw(any);

if (any { some_condition($_) } @my_list) {
    ... # do something
}

Perl has includ­ed the req­ui­site ver­sion of this mod­ule since ver­sion 5.20 in 2014; for ear­li­er releas­es, you’ll need to update from CPAN. List::Util has many oth­er great list-​reduction, key/​value pair, and oth­er relat­ed func­tions you can import into your code, so check it out before you attempt to re-​invent any wheels.

As a side note for web devel­op­ers, the Perl Dancer frame­work also includes an any key­word for declar­ing mul­ti­ple HTTP routes, so if you’re mix­ing List::Util in there don’t import it. Instead, call it explic­it­ly like this or you’ll get an error about a rede­fined function:

use List::Util 1.33;

if (List::Util::any { some_condition($_) } @my_list) {
    ... # do something
}

This rec­om­men­da­tion is cod­i­fied in the BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitBooleanGrep Perl::Critic pol­i­cy, comes direct­ly from Perl Best Practices, and is rec­om­mend­ed by the Software Engineering Institute Computer Emergency Response Team (SEI CERT)’s Perl Coding Standard.

Don’t change $_ in map or grep

I men­tioned this back in March, but it bears repeat­ing: map and grep are intend­ed as pure func­tions, not muta­tors with side effects. This means that the orig­i­nal list should remain unchanged. Yes, each ele­ment alias­es in turn to the $_ spe­cial vari­able, but that’s for speed and can have sur­pris­ing results if changed even if it’s tech­ni­cal­ly allowed. If you need to mod­i­fy an array in-​place use some­thing like:

for (@my_array) {
    $_ = ...; # make your changes here
}

If you want some­thing that looks like map but won’t change the orig­i­nal list (and don’t mind a few CPAN depen­den­cies), con­sid­er List::SomeUtils’ apply function:

use List::SomeUtils qw(apply);

my @doubled_array = apply {$_ *= 2} @old_array;

Lastly, side effects also include things like manip­u­lat­ing oth­er vari­ables or doing input and out­put. Don’t use map or grep in a void con­text (i.e., with­out a result­ing array or list); do some­thing with the results or use a for or foreach loop:

map { print foo($_) } @my_array; # don't do this
print map { foo($_) } @my_array; # do this instead

map { push @new_array, foo($_) } @my_array; # don't do this
@new_array = map { foo($_) } @my_array;     # do this instead

This rec­om­men­da­tion is cod­i­fied by the BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitVoidGrep, BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitVoidMap, and ControlStructures::ProhibitMutatingListFunctions Perl::Critic poli­cies. The lat­ter comes from Perl Best Practices and is an SEI CERT Perl Coding Standard rule.

Use blocks with map and grep, not expressions

You can call map or grep like this (paren­the­ses are option­al around built-​in functions):

my @new_array  = map foo($_), @old_array; # don't do this
my @new_array2 = grep !/^#/, @old_array;  # don't do this

Or like this:

my @new_array  = map { foo($_) } @old_array;
my @new_array2 = grep {!/^#/} @old_array;

Do it the sec­ond way. It’s eas­i­er to read, espe­cial­ly if you’re pass­ing in a lit­er­al list or mul­ti­ple arrays, and the expres­sion forms can con­ceal bugs. This rec­om­men­da­tion is cod­i­fied by the BuiltinFunctions::RequireBlockGrep and BuiltinFunctions::RequireBlockMap Perl::Critic poli­cies and comes from Perl Best Practices.

Refactor multi-​statement maps, greps, and other list functions

map, grep, and friends should fol­low the Unix phi­los­o­phy of ​“Do One Thing and Do It Well.” Your read­abil­i­ty and main­tain­abil­i­ty drop with every state­ment you place inside one of their blocks. Consider junior devel­op­ers and future main­tain­ers (this includes you!) and refac­tor any­thing with more than one state­ment into a sep­a­rate sub­rou­tine or at least a for loop. This goes for list pro­cess­ing func­tions (like the afore­men­tioned any) import­ed from oth­er mod­ules, too.

This rec­om­men­da­tion is cod­i­fied by the Perl Best Practices-inspired BuiltinFunctions::ProhibitComplexMappings and BuiltinFunctions::RequireSimpleSortBlock Perl::Critic poli­cies, although those only cov­er map and sort func­tions, respectively.

Do you have any oth­er sug­ges­tions for list pro­cess­ing best prac­tices? Feel free to leave them in the com­ments or bet­ter yet, con­sid­er cre­at­ing new Perl::Critic poli­cies for them or con­tact­ing the Perl::Critic team to devel­op them for your organization.

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depth of field photography of brown tree logs

A recent Lobsters post laud­ing the virtues of AWK remind­ed me that although the lan­guage is pow­er­ful and lightning-​fast, I usu­al­ly find myself exceed­ing its capa­bil­i­ties and reach­ing for Perl instead. One such appli­ca­tion is ana­lyz­ing volu­mi­nous log files such as the ones gen­er­at­ed by this blog. Yes, WordPress has stats, but I’ve nev­er let rein­ven­tion of the wheel get in the way of a good pro­gram­ming exercise.

So I whipped this script up on Sunday night while watch­ing RuPaul’s Drag Race reruns. It pars­es my Apache web serv­er log files and reports on hits from week to week.

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Syntax::Construct 'operator-double-diamond';
use Regexp::Log::Common;
use DateTime::Format::HTTP;
use List::Util 1.33 'any';
use Number::Format 'format_number';

my $parser = Regexp::Log::Common->new(
    format  => ':extended',
    capture => [qw<req ts status>],
);
my @fields      = $parser->capture;
my $compiled_re = $parser->regexp;

my @skip_uri_patterns = qw<
  ^/+robots.txt
  [-\w]*sitemap[-\w]*.xml
  ^/+wp-
  /feed/?$
  ^/+?rest_route=
>;

my ( %count, %week_of );
while ( <<>> ) {
    my %log;
    @log{@fields} = /$compiled_re/;

    # only interested in successful or cached requests
    next unless $log{status} =~ /^2/ or $log{status} == 304;

    my ( $method, $uri, $protocol ) = split ' ', $log{req};
    next unless $method eq 'GET';
    next if any { $uri =~ $_ } @skip_uri_patterns;

    my $dt  = DateTime::Format::HTTP->parse_datetime( $log{ts} );
    my $key = sprintf '%u-%02u', $dt->week;

    # get first date of each week
    $week_of{$key} ||= $dt->date;
    $count{$key}++;
}

printf "Week of %s: % 10s\n", $week_of{$_}, format_number( $count{$_} )
  for sort keys %count;

Here’s some sam­ple output:

Week of 2021-07-31:      2,672
Week of 2021-08-02:     16,222
Week of 2021-08-09:     12,609
Week of 2021-08-16:     17,714
Week of 2021-08-23:     14,462
Week of 2021-08-30:     11,758
Week of 2021-09-06:     14,811
Week of 2021-09-13:        407

I first start­ed pro­to­typ­ing this on the com­mand line as if it were an awk one-​liner by using the perl -n and -a flags. The for­mer wraps code in a while loop over the <> ​“dia­mond oper­a­tor”, pro­cess­ing each line from stan­dard input or files passed as argu­ments. The lat­ter splits the fields of the line into an array named @F. It looked some­thing like this while I was list­ing URIs (loca­tions on the website):

gunzip -c ~/logs/phoenixtrap.com-ssl_log-*.gz | \
perl -anE 'say $F[6]'

But once I real­ized I’d need to fil­ter out a bunch of URI pat­terns and do some aggre­ga­tion by date, I turned it into a script and turned to CPAN.

There I found Regexp::Log::Common and DateTime::Format::HTTP, which let me pull apart the Apache log for­mat and its time­stamp strings with­out hav­ing to write even more com­pli­cat­ed reg­u­lar expres­sions myself. (As not­ed above, this was already a wheel-​reinvention exer­cise; no need to com­pound that further.)

Regexp::Log::Common builds a com­piled reg­u­lar expres­sion based on the log for­mat and fields you’re inter­est­ed in, so that’s the con­struc­tor on lines 11 through 14. The expres­sion then returns those fields as a list, which I’m assign­ing to a hash slice with those field names as keys in line 29. I then skip over requests that aren’t suc­cess­ful or brows­er cache hits, skip over requests that don’t GET web pages or oth­er assets (e.g., POSTs to forms or updat­ing oth­er resources), and skip over the URI pat­terns men­tioned earlier.

(Those pat­terns are worth a men­tion: they include the robots.txt and sitemap XML files used by search engine index­ers, WordPress admin­is­tra­tion pages, files used by RSS news­read­ers sub­scribed to my blog, and routes used by the Jetpack WordPress add-​on. If you’re adapt­ing this for your site you might need to cus­tomize this list based on what soft­ware you use to run it.)

Lines 38 and 39 parse the time­stamp from the log into a DateTime object using DateTime::Format::HTTP and then build the key used to store the per-​week hit count. The last lines of the loop then grab the first date of each new week (assum­ing the log is in chrono­log­i­cal order) and incre­ment the count. Once fin­ished, lines 46 and 47 pro­vide a report sort­ed by week, dis­play­ing it as a friend­ly ​“Week of date” and the hit counts aligned to the right with sprintf. Number::Format’s format_number func­tion dis­plays the totals with thou­sands separators.

Update: After this was ini­tial­ly pub­lished. astute read­er Chris McGowan not­ed that I had a bug where $log{status} was assigned the val­ue 304 with the = oper­a­tor rather than com­pared with ==. He also sug­gest­ed I use the double-​diamond <<>> oper­a­tor intro­duced in Perl v5.22.0 to avoid maliciously-​named files. Thanks, Chris!

Room for improvement

DateTime is a very pow­er­ful mod­ule but this comes at a price of speed and mem­o­ry. Something sim­pler like Date::WeekNumber should yield per­for­mance improve­ments, espe­cial­ly as my logs grow (here’s hop­ing). It requires a bit more man­u­al mas­sag­ing of the log dates to con­vert them into some­thing the mod­ule can use, though:

#!/usr/bin/env perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Syntax::Construct qw<
  operator-double-diamond
  regex-named-capture-group
>;
use Regexp::Log::Common;
use Date::WeekNumber 'iso_week_number';
use List::Util 1.33 'any';
use Number::Format 'format_number';

my $parser = Regexp::Log::Common->new(
    format  => ':extended',
    capture => [qw<req ts status>],
);
my @fields      = $parser->capture;
my $compiled_re = $parser->regexp;

my @skip_uri_patterns = qw<
  ^/+robots.txt
  [-\w]*sitemap[-\w]*.xml
  ^/+wp-
  /feed/?$
  ^/+?rest_route=
>;

my %month = (
    Jan => '01',
    Feb => '02',
    Mar => '03',
    Apr => '04',
    May => '05',
    Jun => '06',
    Jul => '07',
    Aug => '08',
    Sep => '09',
    Oct => '10',
    Nov => '11',
    Dec => '12',
);

my ( %count, %week_of );
while ( <<>> ) {
    my %log;
    @log{@fields} = /$compiled_re/;

    # only interested in successful or cached requests
    next unless $log{status} =~ /^2/ or $log{status} == 304;

    my ( $method, $uri, $protocol ) = split ' ', $log{req};
    next unless $method eq 'GET';
    next if any { $uri =~ $_ } @skip_uri_patterns;

    # convert log timestamp to YYYY-MM-DD
    # for Date::WeekNumber
    $log{ts} =~ m!^
      (?<day>\d\d) /
      (?<month>...) /
      (?<year>\d{4}) : !x;
    my $date = "$+{year}-$month{ $+{month} }-$+{day}";

    my $week = iso_week_number($date);
    $week_of{$week} ||= $date;
    $count{$week}++;
}

printf "Week of %s: % 10s\n", $week_of{$_}, format_number( $count{$_} )
  for sort keys %count;

It looks almost the same as the first ver­sion, with the addi­tion of a hash to con­vert month names to num­bers and the actu­al con­ver­sion (using named reg­u­lar expres­sion cap­ture groups for read­abil­i­ty, using Syntax::Construct to check for that fea­ture). On my serv­er, this results in a ten- to eleven-​second sav­ings when pro­cess­ing two months of com­pressed logs.

What’s next? Pretty graphs? Drilling down to spe­cif­ic blog posts? Database stor­age for fur­ther queries and analy­sis? Perl and CPAN make it pos­si­ble to go far beyond what you can do with AWK. What would you add or change? Let me know in the comments.