As yet another alternative approach... Taking either of your basic ideas (either storing all names in an Array, or an Enumerator, or keeping a track of taken_names), you could use the regexp-examples ruby gem that I wrote a few years back to abstract the problem of "getting a valid-formatted robot name" -- for example:
/[A-Z]{2}\d{3}/.random_example
Then, if you have different robots with other naming rules, the rest of the cost would work out of the box. (And as a bonus, this regex will likely already exist in your code, to validate that the robot name is ok!)
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Hi Tom! Thanks for sharing! How does this Gem handle collisions? One of the test cases generates all 676,000 robot names, so if calling random_example provides duplicates, we run into the same "theoretical infinite time complexity" issue, calling random_example repeatedly until it provides the one robot name we haven't encountered yet.
You could use Regexp#random_example in conjunction with the taken_names, as per your first solution in this blog post.
Or -- with the potential performance issue of storing a large array in ruby memory (as with all your other examples that use to_a!) -- you could also use Regexp#examples to end up with very similar solutions. (See the documentation.) For example:
.
...Note that this would be a bad idea if the pattern got longer, so the number of possible results was much larger. All of your examples that use to_a, just like my Regexp#examples code above, would soon freeze the system as the array length grows exponentially.
Using Regexp#random_example - similar to your original implementation - would scale fine though.
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As yet another alternative approach... Taking either of your basic ideas (either storing all names in an
Array, or anEnumerator, or keeping a track oftaken_names), you could use the regexp-examples ruby gem that I wrote a few years back to abstract the problem of "getting a valid-formatted robot name" -- for example:Then, if you have different robots with other naming rules, the rest of the cost would work out of the box. (And as a bonus, this regex will likely already exist in your code, to validate that the robot name is ok!)
Hi Tom! Thanks for sharing! How does this Gem handle collisions? One of the test cases generates all 676,000 robot names, so if calling
random_exampleprovides duplicates, we run into the same "theoretical infinite time complexity" issue, callingrandom_examplerepeatedly until it provides the one robot name we haven't encountered yet.You could use
Regexp#random_examplein conjunction with thetaken_names, as per your first solution in this blog post.Or -- with the potential performance issue of storing a large array in ruby memory (as with all your other examples that use
to_a!) -- you could also useRegexp#examplesto end up with very similar solutions. (See the documentation.) For example:.
...Note that this would be a bad idea if the pattern got longer, so the number of possible results was much larger. All of your examples that use
to_a, just like myRegexp#examplescode above, would soon freeze the system as the array length grows exponentially.Using
Regexp#random_example- similar to your original implementation - would scale fine though.