Flatten an array Back

Flattening an array means to simplify an array with extracting embedded array of another array. The following case has apparently shown us what is flattening an array:

[[[1, 2], [1, 2, 3]], [1, 2]] => [1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2] /** flatten in a deep way */
[[[1, 2], [1, 2, 3]], [1, 2]] => [[1, 2], [1, 2, 3], 1, 2] /** flatten only one layer */

Before analyzing the method _.flatten() of underscore, we will have a look at the predicate method flatten():

var flatten = function(input, shallow, strict, startIndex) {
    // ...
};

As we can see above, the method has accepted four parameters, of which the input is the first one to get a given array. Then, shallow is a Boolean value for checking whether to flatten just one layer of the array. startIndex is used to set up where to start to flatten.

strict is also a Boolean value, but it's hard to understand. If strict is given a true value, then it means that each flattening will ignore any elements which is not an array. For example:

var ans = flatten([5, 6, [1, 2], [3, 4]], true, true);
console.log(ans); /** => [1, 2, 3, 4] */

Therefore, if giving false to shallow and true to strict at the same time, the method should always return an empty array.

var flatten = function(input, shallow, strict, startIndex) {
    /**
     * ouput is the array to return
     * idx is a counter
     */
    var output = [], idx = 0;

    /** start from a given startIndex or 0 by default */
    for (var i = startIndex || 0, length = getLength(input); i < length; i++) {
        var value = input[i];

        /** if the value is an array of an argument, then flatten it */
        if (isArrayLike(value) && (_.isArray(value) || _.isArguments(value))) {
            /**
             * flatten current level of array or arguments object
             * if `shallow` is false, then flatten recursively to reassign the value
             */
            if (!shallow) 
                value = flatten(value, shallow, strict);

            /** value shoule be an array */
            var j = 0, len = value.length;

            /** update the length? */
            output.length += len;

            /** push all elements of this value to the output array */
            while (j < len) {
                output[idx++] = value[j++];
            }
        } else if (!strict) { 
            /** if `strict` is false then do not ignore the element which is not an array */
            output[idx++] = value;
        }
    }

    return output;
};

So _.flatten() has been completed by the following code snippet:

_.flatten = function(array, shallow) {
    /** given array and whether to flatten just one layer */
    return flatten(array, shallow, false);
};

_.union() has also called flatten() to complete its duty to combine different sets (arrays with only unique elements):

_.union = function() {
    return _.uniq(flatten(arguments, true, true));
};

_.difference(), _.pick(), and _.omit have also used flatten() to implement. Therefore, one of the most elegant things of underscore is that it has created many predicate methods to implement hundreds of functions.

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