Need a good way to locate elements in an array, or at least that element's index #102
Description
I'm trying to do something that I thought would be easy, but running into some roadblocks...
As an example, let's try to convert an input Month abbreviation into the Date month number (0-based). It's easy to find out if the incoming string is in the array of months, using payload in $months, but finding out what position it occupies in the array is not so easy:
(
$months := [
"Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun",
"Jul", "Aug", "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"
];
$months~>$map(function($val, $idx) {
$val = payload ? $idx : undefined
})
)
A bit clunky, perhaps, but it returns the index number for every array element that is equal to the incoming string. I tried using the $reduce($array, function($total, $value)) -- but unlike the Javascript function of the same name, there is no index value passed as the 3rd argument. At a minimum, I think the $reduce() function should be extended to also pass $index as an optional argument.
But perhaps a pair of new functions would be more intuitive and simpler to use, such as:
$find(array, input)and the overloaded$find(array, function($value))$indexOf(array, input)and the overloaded$indexOf(array, function($value))
Both functions take an array of "things", and either a similar "thing" to find, or a function that determines which element is a match (returns true or false).