I want to use max and argmax on collections. I saw an issue for max but not argmax and it looks different to what I had in mind. Everything here is also applicable to min and argmin. Example of code with equivalent behaviour (minus error handling):
import 'dart:html';
import 'dart:math' as math;
void main() {
final nums = [3, 1, 2];
final animalNames = ['cat', 'turtle', 'sheep'];
final highest = nums.reduce(nums[0], (stored, curr) => math.max(stored, curr));
final longest = animalNames.reduce(animalNames[0], longerString);
print('highest: $highest');
print('longest: $longest');
}
String longerString(final String first, final String second) {
if (first.length < second.length) {
return second;
} else {
return first;
}
}
I've been searching the API but haven't find anything like:
final highest = nums.max;
final longest = animalNames.argmax((name) => name.length);
Similar to Ruby max and max_by.
Questions:
Are there API calls like these already (under some name I haven't checked)?
Are there any plans to make them?
Should I raise an issue?
I don't think there is, but here's a pretty trivial implementation based on your example:
animalNames.reduce("", (prev, cur) => prev.length > cur.length ? prev : cur);
This is faster than sorting if you only want to look it up once, but this can get a little unwieldy if you have complex logic for your argmax.
In one of the Dartisans videos, one of the devs mentioned how they're trying to make a lot of the common patterns easy, so I think something like this would have a pretty good chance of making it into the standard library if you make a good enough case for it.
Related
I tried to do this thing in dart but it failed and I don't really understand why. I know that dart doesn't support robust "Pattern Matching" like elixir does, but I thought it should be able to compare two lists. No. Why not? what is it about the typing system that can't equate two lists and if it could, could it support even rudimentary pattern matching? I'm just trying to understand how equate works in dart I guess.
void main() {
final x = 1;
final y = 2;
if (x == 1 && y == 2) {
print('this works fine of course');
}
if ([1, 2] == [1, 2]) {
print('but this does not');
}
if ([x, y] == [1, 2]) {
print('would this work if dart could equate lists?');
}
}
Dart lists do not implement operator== in a way that checks the elements for equality.
Dart lists are assumed to be mutable, and the Dart platform libraries generally do not provide an equality for mutable objects, because they are not guaranteed to preserve that equality over time.
Also, for lists, because it's not obvious which equality to use. Should it just compare elements? Then a <num>[1] list would be equal to <int>[1], even if they are very different lists.
For those reasons, you are supposed to decide which equality you actually want, without one being the canonical one.
You can, for example, use const ListEquality().equals from package:collection. It defaults to using == on the elements, but can be configured to use other equalities as well.
import 'package:flutter/foundation.dart';
void main() async {
final x = 1;
final y = 2;
if (x == 1 && y == 2) {
print('this works fine of course');
}
if (listEquals([1, 2],[1, 2])) {
print('Yep');
}
if (listEquals([x, y], [1, 2])) {
print('would this work if dart could equate lists? Yep');
}
}
Output:
this works fine of course
Yep
would this work if dart could equate lists? Yep
I have the following zig code (simplified):
const allocator = ...;
const Entry = struct {
name: []u8,
};
fn list() ![]u8 {
var entries = try std.json.parse([]Entry, ...);
defer std.json.parseFree([]Entry, entries, ...);
return entries[0];
}
fn main() !void {
const e = try list();
...
}
Everything is (de)allocated with allocator.
I'd like to return entries[0] and recycle everything else. The problem is that parseFree here recycles everything including entries[0] so I can't seemingly use this function.
So what's the most effective way to do that without copying? What if Entry is a big structure and I want to return just one its field, say Entry.name (and, again, recycle everything else)?
The quickest way of achieving what you want is to not use parseFree but instead:
const first = entries[0].name;
for (entries[1..entries.len]) |e| alloc.free(e.name); // frees individual strings
alloc.free(entries); // frees the array of structs
return Entry { .name = first };
This is fairly straightforward but relies on understanding how memory is allocated by std.json and the implementation might one day want to allocate things differently, causing the code above to break.
Because of that, my recommendation would be to just copy the string and only resort to this type of extra complexity once you have demonstrated that avoiding that copy brings perceivable benefits.
Let's say I want to process a variadic function which alternately gets passed start and end values of 1 or more intervals and it should return a range of random values in those intervals. You can imagine the input to be a flattened sequence of tuples, all tuple elements spread over one single range.
import std.meta; //variadic template predicates
import std.traits : isFloatingPoint;
import std.range;
auto randomIntervals(T = U[0], U...)(U intervals)
if (U.length/2 > 0 && isFloatingPoint!T && NoDuplicates!U.length == 1) {
import std.random : uniform01;
T[U.length/2] randomValues;
// split and iterate over subranges of size 2
foreach(i, T start, T end; intervals.chunks(2)) { //= intervals.slide(2,2)
randomValues[i] = uniform01 * (end - start) + start,
}
return randomValues.dup;
}
The example is not important, I only use it for explanation. The chunk size could be any finite positive size_t, not only 2 and changing the chunk size should only require changing the number of loop-variables in the foreach loop.
In this form above it will not compile since it would only expect one argument (a range) to the foreach loop. What I would like is something which rather automatically uses or infers a sliding-window as a tuple, derived from the number of given loop-variables, and fills the additional variables with next elements of the range/array + allows for an additional index, optionally. According to the documentation a range of tuples allows destructuring of the tuple elements in place into foreach-loop-variables so the first thing, I thought about, is turning a range into a sequence of tuples but didn't find a convenience function for this.
Is there a simple way to loop over destructured subranges (with such a simplicity as shown in my example code) together with the index? Or is there a (standard library) function which does this job of splitting a range into enumerated tuples of equal size? How to easily turn the range of subranges into a range of tuples?
Is it possible with std.algorithm.iteration.map in this case (EDIT: with a simple function argument to map and without accessing tuple elements)?
EDIT: I want to ignore the last chunk which doesn't fit into the entire tuple. It just is not iterated over.
EDIT: It's not, that I couldn't program this myself, I only hope for a simple notation because this use case of looping over multiple elements is quite useful. If there is something like a "spread" or "rest" operator in D like in JavaScript, please let me know!
Thank you.
(Added as a separate answer because it's significantly different from my previous answer, and wouldn't fit in a comment)
After reading your comments and the discussion on the answers thus far, it seems to me what you seek is something like the below staticChunks function:
unittest {
import std.range : enumerate;
size_t index = 0;
foreach (i, a, b, c; [1,2,3,1,2,3].staticChunks!3.enumerate) {
assert(a == 1);
assert(b == 2);
assert(c == 3);
assert(i == index);
++index;
}
}
import std.range : isInputRange;
auto staticChunks(size_t n, R)(R r) if (isInputRange!R) {
import std.range : chunks;
import std.algorithm : map, filter;
return r.chunks(n).filter!(a => a.length == n).map!(a => a.tuplify!n);
}
auto tuplify(size_t n, R)(R r) if (isInputRange!R) {
import std.meta : Repeat;
import std.range : ElementType;
import std.typecons : Tuple;
import std.array : front, popFront, empty;
Tuple!(Repeat!(n, ElementType!R)) result;
static foreach (i; 0..n) {
result[i] = r.front;
r.popFront();
}
assert(r.empty);
return result;
}
Note that this also deals with the last chunk being a different size, if only by silently throwing it away. If this behavior is undesirable, remove the filter, and deal with it inside tuplify (or don't, and watch the exceptions roll in).
chunks and slide return Ranges, not tuples. Their last element can contain less than the specified size, whereas tuples have a fixed compile time size.
If you need destructuring, you have to implement your own chunks/slide that return tuples. To explicitly add an index to the tuple, use enumerate. Here is an example:
import std.typecons, std.stdio, std.range;
Tuple!(int, int)[] pairs(){
return [
tuple(1, 3),
tuple(2, 4),
tuple(3, 5)
];
}
void main(){
foreach(size_t i, int start, int end; pairs.enumerate){
writeln(i, ' ', start, ' ', end);
}
}
Edit:
As BioTronic said using map is also possible:
foreach(i, start, end; intervals
.chunks(2)
.map!(a => tuple(a[0], a[1]))
.enumerate){
Your question has me a little confused, so I'm sorry if I've misunderstood. What you're basically asking is if foreach(a, b; [1,2,3,4].chunks(2)) could work, right?
The simple solution here is to, as you say, map from chunk to tuple:
import std.typecons : tuple;
import std.algorithm : map;
import std.range : chunks;
import std.stdio : writeln;
unittest {
pragma(msg, typeof([1,2].chunks(2).front));
foreach(a, b; [1,2,3,4].chunks(2).map!(a => tuple(a[0], a[1]))) {
writeln(a, ", ", b);
}
}
At the same time with BioTronic, I tried to code some own solution to this problem (tested on DMD). My solution works for slices (BUT NOT fixed-size arrays) and avoids a call to filter:
import std.range : chunks, isInputRange, enumerate;
import std.range : isRandomAccessRange; //changed from "hasSlicing" to "isRandomAccessRange" thanks to BioTronics
import std.traits : isIterable;
/** turns chunks into tuples */
template byTuples(size_t N, M)
if (isRandomAccessRange!M) { //EDITED
import std.meta : Repeat;
import std.typecons : Tuple;
import std.traits : ForeachType;
alias VariableGroup = Tuple!(Repeat!(N, ForeachType!M)); //Tuple of N repititions of M's Foreach-iterated Type
/** turns N consecutive array elements into a Variable Group */
auto toTuple (Chunk)(Chunk subArray) #nogc #safe pure nothrow
if (isInputRange!Chunk) { //Chunk must be indexable
VariableGroup nextLoopVariables; //fill the tuple with static foreach loop
static foreach(index; 0 .. N) {
static if ( isRandomAccessRange!Chunk ) { // add cases for other ranges here
nextLoopVariables[index] = subArray[index];
} else {
nextLoopVariables[index] = subArray.popFront();
}
}
return nextLoopVariables;
}
/** returns a range of VariableGroups */
auto byTuples(M array) #safe pure nothrow {
import std.algorithm.iteration : map;
static if(!isInputRange!M) {
static assert(0, "Cannot call map() on fixed-size array.");
// auto varGroups = array[].chunks(N); //fixed-size arrays aren't slices by default and cannot be treated like ranges
//WARNING! invoking "map" on a chunk range from fixed-size array will fail and access wrong memory with no warning or exception despite #safe!
} else {
auto varGroups = array.chunks(N);
}
//remove last group if incomplete
if (varGroups.back.length < N) varGroups.popBack();
//NOTE! I don't know why but `map!toTuple` DOES NOT COMPILE! And will cause a template compilation mess.
return varGroups.map!(chunk => toTuple(chunk)); //don't know if it uses GC
}
}
void main() {
testArrayToTuples([1, 3, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9]);
}
// Order of template parameters is relevant.
// You must define parameters implicitly at first to be associated with a template specialization
void testArrayToTuples(U : V[], V)(U arr) {
double[] randomNumbers = new double[arr.length / 2];
// generate random numbers
foreach(i, double x, double y; byTuples!2(arr).enumerate ) { //cannot use UFCS with "byTuples"
import std.random : uniform01;
randomNumbers[i] = (uniform01 * (y - x) + x);
}
foreach(n; randomNumbers) { //'n' apparently works despite shadowing a template parameter
import std.stdio : writeln;
writeln(n);
}
}
Using elementwise operations with the slice operator would not work here because uniform01 in uniform01 * (ends[] - starts[]) + starts[] would only be called once and not multiple times.
EDIT: I also tested some online compilers for D for this code and it's weird that they behave differently for the same code. For compilation of D I can recommend
https://run.dlang.io/ (I would be very surprised if this one wouldn't work)
https://www.mycompiler.io/new/d (but a bit slow)
https://ideone.com (it works but it makes your code public! Don't use with protected code.)
but those didn't work for me:
https://tio.run/#d2 (didn't finish compilation in one case, otherwise wrong results on execution even when using dynamic array for the test)
https://www.tutorialspoint.com/compile_d_online.php (doesn't compile the static foreach)
I store various formulas in Postgres and I want to use those formulas in my code. It would look something like this:
var amount = 100;
var formula = '5/105'; // normally something I would fetch from Postgres
var total = amount * formula; // should return 4.76
Is there a way to evaluate the string in this manner?
As far as I'm aware, there isn't a formula solver package developed for Dart yet. (If one exists or gets created after this post, we can edit it into the answer.)
EDIT: Mattia in the comments points out the math_expressions package, which looks pretty robust and easy to use.
There is a way to execute arbitrary Dart code as a string, but it has several problems. A] It's very roundabout and convoluted; B] it becomes a massive security issue; and C] it only works if the Dart is compiled in JIT mode (so in Flutter this means it will only work in debug builds, not release builds).
So the answer is that unfortunately, you will have to implement it yourself. The good news is that, for simple 4-function arithmetic, this is pretty straight-forward, and you can follow a tutorial on writing a calculator app like this one to see how it's done.
Of course, if all your formulas only contain two terms with an operator between them like in your example snippet, it becomes even easier. You can do the whole thing in just a few lines of code:
void main() {
final amount = 100;
final formula = '5/105';
final pattern = RegExp(r'(\d+)([\/+*-])(\d+)');
final match = pattern.firstMatch(formula);
final value = process(num.parse(match[1]), match[2], num.parse(match[3]));
final total = amount * value;
print(total); // Prints: 4.761904761904762
}
num process(num a, String operator, num b) {
switch (operator) {
case '+': return a + b;
case '-': return a - b;
case '*': return a * b;
case '/': return a / b;
}
throw ArgumentError(operator);
}
There are a few packages that can be used to accomplish this:
pub.dev/packages/function_tree
pub.dev/packages/math_expressions
pub.dev/packages/expressions
I used function_tree as follows:
double amount = 100.55;
String formula = '5/105*.5'; // From Postgres
final tax = amount * formula.interpret();
I haven't tried it, but using math_expressions it should look like this:
double amount = 100.55;
String formula = '5/105*.5'; // From Postgres
Parser p = Parser();
// Context is used to evaluate variables, can be empty in this case.
ContextModel cm = ContextModel();
Expression exp = p.parse(formula) * p.parse(amount.toString());
// or..
//Expression exp = p.parse(formula) * Number(amount);
double result = exp.evaluate(EvaluationType.REAL, cm);
// Result: 2.394047619047619
print('Result: ${result}');
Thanks to fkleon for the math_expressions help.
I'm trying to write what I would think of as an extremely simple piece of code in Rascal: Testing if list A contains list B.
Starting out with some very basic code to create a list of strings
public list[str] makeStringList(int Start, int End)
{
return [ "some string with number <i>" | i <- [Start..End]];
}
public list[str] toTest = makeStringList(0, 200000);
My first try was 'inspired' by the sorting example in the tutor:
public void findClone(list[str] In, str S1, str S2, str S3, str S4, str S5, str S6)
{
switch(In)
{
case [*str head, str i1, str i2, str i3, str i4, str i5, str i6, *str tail]:
{
if(S1 == i1 && S2 == i2 && S3 == i3 && S4 == i4 && S5 == i5 && S6 == i6)
{
println("found duplicate\n\t<i1>\n\t<i2>\n\t<i3>\n\t<i4>\n\t<i5>\n\t<i6>");
}
fail;
}
default:
return;
}
}
Not very pretty, but I expected it to work. Unfortunately, the code runs for about 30 seconds before crashing with an "out of memory" error.
I then tried a better looking alternative:
public void findClone2(list[str] In, list[str] whatWeSearchFor)
{
for ([*str head, *str mid, *str end] := In)
if (mid == whatWeSearchFor)
println("gotcha");
}
with approximately the same result (seems to run a little longer before running out of memory)
Finally, I tried a 'good old' C-style approach with a for-loop
public void findClone3(list[str] In, list[str] whatWeSearchFor)
{
cloneLength = size(whatWeSearchFor);
inputLength = size(In);
if(inputLength < cloneLength) return [];
loopLength = inputLength - cloneLength + 1;
for(int i <- [0..loopLength])
{
isAClone = true;
for(int j <- [0..cloneLength])
{
if(In[i+j] != whatWeSearchFor[j])
isAClone = false;
}
if(isAClone) println("Found clone <whatWeSearchFor> on lines <i> through <i+cloneLength-1>");
}
}
To my surprise, this one works like a charm. No out of memory, and results in seconds.
I get that my first two attempts probably create a lot of temporary string objects that all have to be garbage collected, but I can't believe that the only solution that worked really is the best solution.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
My relevant eclipse.ini settings are
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m
-Xms512m
-Xss64m
-Xmx1G
We'll need to look to see why this is happening. Note that, if you want to use pattern matching, this is maybe a better way to write it:
public void findClone(list[str] In, str S1, str S2, str S3, str S4, str S5, str S6) {
switch(In) {
case [*str head, S1, S2, S3, S4, S5, S6, *str tail]: {
println("found duplicate\n\t<S1>\n\t<S2>\n\t<S3>\n\t<S4>\n\t<S5>\n\t<S6>");
}
default:
return;
}
}
If you do this, you are taking advantage of Rascal's matcher to actually find the matching strings directly, versus your first example in which any string would match but then you needed to use a number of separate comparisons to see if the match represented the combination you were looking for. If I run this on 110145 through 110150 it takes a while but works and it doesn't seem to grow beyond the heap space you allocated to it.
Also, is there a reason you are using fail? Is this to continue searching?
It's an algorithmic issue like Mark Hills said. In Rascal some short code can still entail a lot of nested loops, almost implicitly. Basically every * splice operator on a fresh variable that you use on the pattern side in a list generates one level of loop nesting, except for the last one which is just the rest of the list.
In your code of findClone2 you are first generating all combinations of sublists and then filtering them using the if construct. So that's a correct algorithm, but probably slow. This is your code:
void findClone2(list[str] In, list[str] whatWeSearchFor)
{
for ([*str head, *str mid, *str end] := In)
if (mid == whatWeSearchFor)
println("gotcha");
}
You see how it has a nested loop over In, because it has two effective * operators in the pattern. The code runs therefore in O(n^2), where n is the length of In. I.e. it has quadratic runtime behaviour for the size of the In list. In is a big list so this matters.
In the following new code, we filter first while generating answers, using fewer lines of code:
public void findCloneLinear(list[str] In, list[str] whatWeSearchFor)
{
for ([*str head, *whatWeSearchFor, *str end] := In)
println("gotcha");
}
The second * operator does not generate a new loop because it is not fresh. It just "pastes" the given list values into the pattern. So now there is actually only one effective * which generates a loop which is the first on head. This one makes the algorithm loop over the list. The second * tests if the elements of whatWeSearchFor are all right there in the list after head (this is linear in the size of whatWeSearchFor and then the last *_ just completes the list allowing for more stuff to follow.
It's also nice to know where the clone is sometimes:
public void findCloneLinear(list[str] In, list[str] whatWeSearchFor)
{
for ([*head, *whatWeSearchFor, *_] := In)
println("gotcha at <size(head)>");
}
Rascal does not have an optimising compiler (yet) which might possibly internally transform your algorithms to equivalent optimised ones. So as a Rascal programmer you are still asked to know the effect of loops on your algorithms complexity and know that * is a very short notation for a loop.