Stream-based Dataflow Programming
Understand how streams allow us to formulate dataflow programs that work with signals of infinite elements.
Limitations of list-based dataflow programming
The functional paradigm allows us to formulate programs in the dataflow style by composing function lists, such as map
, filter
, and fold
. Unfortunately, list-based dataflow programming in OCaml has a severe limitation—lists are finite.
To illustrate, suppose we implement a function called first_prime_greater_equal
. This function returns the first prime number greater than or equal to a given n
. We can attempt to formulate a dataflow program to solve this problem with the following steps:
- Enumerate integers greater than or equal
n
- Filter the list, keeping only prime numbers
- Take the head of the resulting list
In other words, we attempt to formulate the following dataflow diagram:
Get hands-on with 1200+ tech skills courses.