separated method added in Iterable extension

[kishan-dhankecha]

Fixes dart-lang/core#674.

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[kishan-dhankecha]

@kevmoo can you please review this one?

[kevmoo]

I'd leave the review to @devoncarew and/or @lrhn

[kevmoo]

LGTM – just want one more nod on this. We should be mindful when adding things we'll need to support "forever".

[lrhn]

I don't think this version is flexible enough.
The use-cases I've heard mentioned won't all be satisfies by inserting the same value every time, and the typing might not work out.

I'd at least want a version where the separator is generated each time.
Then it could be generated based on position, or on adjacent values.

Something like these would cover those:

Iterable<T> separatedByValue(T separator) { ... }
Iterable<T> separatedBy(T Function() separator) { ... }

and possibly also:

// Position is index of next element, from 1 to `lenght` - 1.
Iterable<T> separatedByIndex(T Function(int position) separator) { ... }
Iterable<T> separatedByElements(T Function(T before, T after) separator) { ... }

The separatedBy and separatedByIndex might be combined into one, it's easy to ignore an argument, and cheap to increment an integer.

I'd expect the separator to not always have the same type as the elements being separated. (A List<TextWidgets> cannot be separated by SeparatorWidgets, one would have to first copy the text widgets into a List<Widget> and then separate them)

That makes a top-level function more useful (or stastic function or constructor, if we could add such using extensions):

  static Iterable<S> separatedBy<S>(Iterable<S> elements, S Function(int position)  separator) { ... }
  static Iterable<S> separatedByValue<S>(Iterable<S> elements, S  separator) { ... }
  static Iterable<S> separatedByElements<S, T extends S>(Iterable<T> elements, S Function(T before, T after)  separator) { ... }

Maybe we can make the separator optional, like:

  static Iterable<S> separatedOptionalBy<S>(Iterable<S> elements, S? Function(int position)  separator) { ... }
  static Iterable<S> separatedOptionalByElements<S, T extends S>(Iterable<T> elements, S? Function(T before, T after)  separator) { ... }

where returning null means no separator.
(Consider: separatedOptionalByElements(pathSegments, (before, after) => before.endsWith('/') || after.startsWith('/') ? null : '/') where we only insert a separator where it's needed. Maybe this is too specialized, and a join with conditional separator would be more relevant.)

[mosuem]

Closing as the dart-lang/collection repository is merged into the dart-lang/core monorepo. Please re-open this PR there!