x/exp/slices: add ContainsFunc

[GRbit]

During the design of the slices package ContainsFunc function was dropped at the time of discussion (#47203 (comment)). Briefly, the discussion was about the signature of the function and how often it is used.

I suggest finally making ContainsFunc, since we have Contains, so it will be consistent to have ContainsFunc as well. Also, it's just convenient to have such a function. Talking about the signature, for me, it's reasonable to make it the same as for IndexFunc: ContainsFunc[E comparable](s []E, f func(E) bool) bool

Note:
I've created a PR for this change because I'm new here and didn't know that such change needs a proposal. In case you are curious – here it is: golang/exp#39

[josharian]

This operation is very common. It also often goes by the name Any. Yes, ContainsFunc matches the pattern in the package, but Any is delightfully concise.

It'd also be really nice to have the dual, All. Yes, like any dual, it is easy to implement All in terms of Any, but given the frequency of use, it's worth having the clarity of a separate function.

[rsc]

This proposal has been added to the active column of the proposals project
and will now be reviewed at the weekly proposal review meetings.
— rsc for the proposal review group

[rsc]

It sounds like the main justification would be that we have Index and Contains (which wraps Index), and we have IndexFunc but not ContainsFunc. So adding ContainsFunc would complete the set.

@bradfitz reports that in the Tailscale source tree there are four implementations of ContainsFunc, only one generic. So that argues for adding ContainsFunc.

I am sympathetic to @josharian's comment about Any, but we already call it ContainsFunc elsewhere in the standard library, so we should probably keep that name here.

Sorry, I confused myself with #54386. We don't have it already. But probably keeping the naming pattern going does make sense.

[rsc]

<tangent>
As a tangent regarding "any", if we did want to add a function called Any in Go, I think it would be nice if we could make it return (T, ok) rather than just a bool, so that you can actually extract the thing that matches the predicate. Perhaps it would be

func Any[T any](x []T, f func(T)bool) (T, bool)

or perhaps it would be

func Any[T, U any](x []T, f func(T)(U, bool)) (U, bool)

The latter is most analogous to what Common Lisp calls 'some'.

Writing out those type signatures, I notice the collision between 'Any' and 'any', which have very different meanings. That makes me think maybe the function should have a different name. Maybe Some.

If anyone (someone?) wants to push further on this, feel free to file a separate proposal issue.
</tangent>

[josharian]

I'd like to push a little bit to consider using Any and All, since they are such nice, succinct names. And if we use ContainsFunc, it's not at all clear what to call All.

I'd call the (T, ok) flavor of this First, since that also makes it clear which element gets returned in case multiple match. (Last might also be desirable.)

[GRbit]

Personally, I would like to see these signatures:

func Any[T any](x []T, f func(T)bool) (bool)
func All[T any](x []T, f func(T)bool) (bool)

It's pretty convenient to use Any in if conditions and switch cases, which would be less convenient if it would return something more than a single bool value.

First and Last functions look good to me, can implement them as well.

[rsc]

I appreciate the elegance of Any and All, but we have the analogy already set up: Index is to Contains as IndexFunc is to ___. The answer is clearly ContainsFunc. We should use the name people already familiar with the other APIs will expect if we're going to do this.

(In strings and bytes, we also have IndexAny and ContainsAny, which is something else entirely.)

[rsc]

Based on the discussion above, this proposal seems like a likely accept.
— rsc for the proposal review group

[rsc]

No change in consensus, so accepted. 🎉
This issue now tracks the work of implementing the proposal.
— rsc for the proposal review group

[ianlancetaylor]

This work was completed by https://go.dev/cl/417374.