TL;DR

Here we are with TASK #1 from the Perl Weekly Challenge #122. Enjoy!

The challenge

You are given a stream of numbers, @N.

Write a script to print the average of the stream at every point.

Example

Input: @N = (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, ...)
Output:      10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, ...

Average of first number is 10.
Average of first 2 numbers (10+20)/2 = 15
Average of first 3 numbers (10+20+30)/3 = 20
Average of first 4 numbers (10+20+30+40)/4 = 25 and so on.

The questions

My main question is about how big numbers are and how many items might be in the stream. We will assume that the sum of all items fits inside an integer, even though this might be easily overcome in Perl using Math::BigFloat.

And while we’re at it… are we talking about generic numbers or integers only? Just for curiosity…

Last, we will assume that we actually have to write the Average of first... strings… although the example seems to indicate not 😂

The solution

We will keep it simple, tracking the sum as we go on and dividing it by the number of items summed so far at each step. This can trigger some overflow… that’s why the questions.

In the spirit of learning some Raku, I went for it first:

#!/usr/bin/env raku
use v6;

sub average-of-stream (@items) {
   my ($sum, $tsum) = (0, '');
   for 0 .. @items.end -> $last {
      $sum += @items[$last];
      if (! $last) {
         put "Average of first number is $sum.";
         $tsum = $sum;
      }
      else {
         my $n = $last + 1;
         $tsum = $tsum ~ '+' ~ @items[$last];
         put "Average of first $n numbers ($tsum)/$n = {{ $sum / $n }}";
      }
   }
}

my @stream = @*ARGS ?? @*ARGS !! <10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90>;
average-of-stream(@stream);

Then… Perl:

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use v5.24;
use warnings;
use experimental 'signatures';
no warnings 'experimental::signatures';

sub average_of_stream (@items) {
   my ($sum, $tsum) = (0, '');
   for my $last (0 .. $#items) {
      $sum += $items[$last];
      if (! $last) {
         say "Average of first number is $sum.";
         $tsum = $sum;
      }
      else {
         my $n = $last + 1;
         $tsum = $tsum . '+' . $items[$last];
         my $avg = $sum / $n;
         say "Average of first $n numbers ($tsum)/$n = $avg";
      }
   }
}

my @stream = @ARGV ? @ARGV : qw<10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90>;
average_of_stream(@stream);

Enough for this post, thank you all!