CredoUnnecessaryReduce

From the docs for Enum.reduce/3:

When an operation cannot be expressed by any of the functions in the Enum module, developers will most likely resort to reduce/3.

---

This library implements a custom credo check which looks for opportunities to refactor usage of Enum.reduce into other Enum functions (and Map.new!).

The goal is both to:

• identify places where code could be simpler
• help people learn about variety of useful functions that exist in Elixir's Enum module

See also Motivation in the wiki.

Examples

For example, the following cases would be detected:

Enum.reduce(numbers, [], fn i, result -> [i * 10 | result] end)
|> Enum.reverse()

# The `++` is another way to build a list in Elixir, but because of the way lists are 
# stored, it's much more efficient to prepend and then reverse.
Enum.reduce(numbers, [], fn i, result -> result ++ [i * 10] end)

Both of these cases could be replaced by a Enum.map(numbers, &(&1 * 10))

For a different example:

Enum.reduce(numbers, [], fn number, result ->
  if rem(number, 2) != 0 do
    result
  else
    [number | result]
  end
end)
|> Enum.reverse()

That whole block could be replaced by Enum.filter(numbers, &(rem(number, 2) == 0)).

Currently this library checks for cases of Enum.reduce which could be replaced by:

• Enum.any?
• Enum.all?
• Enum.filter
• Enum.flat_map
• Enum.map
• Enum.product
• Enum.product_by
• Enum.reject
• Enum.sum
• Enum.sum_by
• Enum.count
• Enum.split_with
• Map.new

See Examples for specific cases of code that is detected.

Installation

If available in Hex, the package can be installed by adding credo_unnecessary_reduce to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:credo_unnecessary_reduce, "~> 0.3.0"}
  ]
end

You can enable the check by adding it to your .credo.exs file under the checks section:

[
  checks: [
    # Other checks...
    {CredoUnnecessaryReduce.Check, []}
  ]
]

## Combination cases

Sometimes an `Enum.reduce` call will be doing more than one thing at a time.  For example it's very common to have a `reduce` can be replaced by an `Enum.filter` piped into an `Enum.map`:

```elixir
Enum.reduce(numbers, [], fn item, acc ->
  if rem(item, 2) == 0 do
    [item * 2 | acc]
  else
    acc
  end
end)
|> Enum.reverse()

The split out version:

numbers
|> Enum.filter(& rem(&1, 2) == 0)
|> Enum.map(& &1 * 2)

In this case the credo_unnecessary_reduce check will just recommend replacing with the outermost pattern in can detect (Enum.filter in this case). It may be possible to support suggesting the whole chain, but because of the complexity of that challenge it's enough for now that Enum.reduce calls that can be simplified are identified successfully.

Current Limitations

The check currently detects and suggests replacements for certain patterns of Enum.reduce. However, it may not suggest the full chain of refactors, especially in complex combinations where multiple operations are performed in sequence.

Bugs

This library is designed to lean on the side of triggering only when a use of reduce would be better served by another function. This means that there are some cases it will never be able to catch.

Also, it's possible that it may catch cases which don't necessarily need to be replaced. If you could make an argument that reduce is better, that could be a bug and a GitHub issue would be welcome!

TODO

Potential low hanging fruit:

• Enum.count_until
• Enum.frequencies
• Enum.frequencies_by
• Enum.max
• Enum.max_by
• Enum.min
• Enum.min_by

Unsure right now, could be good:

• Enum.find
• Enum.find_index
• Enum.find_value
• Enum.group_by
• Enum.into
• Enum.join
• Enum.min_max
• Enum.min_max_by
• Enum.uniq
• Enum.uniq_by

Documentation can be generated with ExDoc and published on HexDocs. Once published, the docs can be found at https://hexdocs.pm/credo_unnecessary_reduce.