Using properties in F# - f#

Hopefully this is coherent, albeit longwinded.
I am trying to create a property in one .fs file that I can set from a separate .fs file and then use that value in a module in the first .fs file... For instance,
In my first file function.fs, I would like to define a property theta.
I would then like to define a function Q in function.fs such that:
function Q = Q(r) and...
Q(r) is dependent on some calculations that are dependent on theta,
i.e
A1(theta), A2(theta), A3(theta)
Q returns a data set in the form of a list.
I would also like to maintain a set of theta values in my main .fs file program.fs (i.e.
theta = [90;120;150;180])
I would then like to generate a data sets from function.fs for each theta.
My thought was to do this by setting a value for a property theta, running the program to generate a data set, setting a new value for theta, running the program to generate a data set, repeat... I have done a fair amount of research, what is not clear to me is how I actually recall the value of the property in the code for Q(r).
I have successfully setup a property in my function.fs file that I can set from program.fs:
In function.fs I have:
namespace models.test
type ContactAngle() =
let mutable m_theta = 90.0
//read only property
member this.Empty =
m_theta = 90.0
//read-write property
//i think i'm onto something with this static...
member this.Angle
with get() =
m_theta
and set newAmt =
m_theta <- newAmt
//module HTModel =
And in program.fs I have:
open models.test
let me = new ContactAngle()
printfn "%A" me.Angle
me.Angle <- 120.0
printfn "%A" me.Angle
This allows me to redefine the value theta. Where I am struggling is how I now use the new property value in a function in function.fs.
I feel like I am missing something very elementary and need some help! Any insight would be greatly appreciated!

Since functions evaluate when they are called not when created (exactly like in, for example, C#) you can just create a normal function in your ContactAngle type like this:
member this.DoSomenthingWithTheta multiplier
m_theta <- m_theta * multiplier
You can reuse your mutable value anywhere in your class.
To clarify all that you should read 'members' section of F# language reference.
But if you want to use that value outside your type and in a place where you don't have your initiated instance. Well then You would have to take a different approach. For example create a static mutable field and expose it with static property. Or create a singleton to store your value throughout the application.
But this kind of kills the 'spirit' of functional programming :).

Related

Clarifying field types in F#

After some practice with F#, I have still some points where I need to clear confusion:
The question is specifically about fields in a type.
This is what I understand and, some must be wrong because the naming wouldn't make sense if I was right:
let x -> private read-only field, evaluated once
let mutable x -> private mutable field
val x -> public read-only field.. difference with let?
val mutable x -> public mutable field
member this.x -> private read-only field, evaluated every time
member val -> public mutable field.. difference with val? why no mutable keyword?
Can someone tell me what is right / wrong, or some concepts I may have gotten wrong.
First of all, you can pretty much ignore val and val mutable. Those two are used with an older syntax for defining classes that is not exactly formally deprecated, but I would almost never use it when writing new normal F# code (there are some rare use cases, but I don't think it's worth worrying about those).
This leaves let and let mutable vs. member and member val.
let defines a private field that can only be accessed within the class. The value you assign to it is evaluated once. You can also define functions like let foo x = x + 1 or let bar () = printfn "hi" which have body that's evaluated when the function is called.
let mutable defines a private mutable field. This is initialized by evaluating the right-hand side, but you can later mutate it using fld <- <new value>.
member this.Foo = (...) defines a get-only property. The expression (...) is evaluated repeatedly whenever the property is accessed. This is a side-effect of how .NET properties work - they have a hidden get() method that's called whenever they are accessed, so the body is the body of this method.
member val Foo = (...) is a way of writing a property that is evaluated only once. In earlier versions of F#, this was not available, so you had to implement this functionality quite tediously yourself by definining a local field (to run the code once) and then returning that from a regular property:
let foo = (...)
member x.Foo = foo

F# / Simplest way to validate array length at COMPILE time

I have some scientific project. There are vectors / square matrices of various lengths there. Obviously (for example) a vector of length 2 cannot be added to a vector of length 3 (and so on and so forth). There are several NET libraries, which deal with vectors / matrices. All of them either have generic vectors / matrices OR have some very specific vectors / matrices, which do not suite the needs.
Most, if not all, of these libraries can create a vector from a list or array. Unfortunately, If I mistakenly give an input array of the wrong length, then I will get a vector of the wrong length and then everything will blow up at run time!
I wonder if it is possible to check array length at compile time so that to get a compile error if, let’s say, I try to pass a 5-element array to a vector of length 2 “constructor”. After all, printfn does almost that!
F# type providers come to mind, but I am not sure how to apply them here.
Thanks a lot!
Thanks to the OP for an interesting question. My answer frequency has dropped not because of unwillingness to help but rather that there a few questions that tickles my interest.
We don't have dependent types in F# and F# doesn't support generics with numerical type arguments (like C++).
However we could create distinct types for different dimensions like Dim1, Dim2 and so on and provide them as type arguments.
This would allow us to have a type signature for apply that applies a vector a matrix like this:
let apply (m : Matrix<'R, 'C>) (v : Vector<'C>) : Vector<'R> = …
The code won't compile unless the columns of the matrix matches the length of the vector. In addition; the resulting vector has the length that is rows of the columns.
One way to do this is defining an interface IDimension and some concrete implementions representing the different dimensions.
type IDimension =
interface
abstract Size : int
end
type Dim1 () = class interface IDimension with member x.Size = 1 end end
type Dim2 () = class interface IDimension with member x.Size = 2 end end
The vector and the matrix can then be implemented like this
type Vector<'Dim when 'Dim :> IDimension
and 'Dim : (new : unit -> 'Dim)
> () =
class
let dim = new 'Dim()
let vs = Array.zeroCreate<float> dim.Size
member x.Dim = dim
member x.Values = vs
end
type Matrix<'RowDim, 'ColumnDim when 'RowDim :> IDimension
and 'RowDim : (new : unit -> 'RowDim)
and 'ColumnDim :> IDimension
and 'ColumnDim : (new : unit -> 'ColumnDim)
> () =
class
let rowDim = new 'RowDim()
let columnDim = new 'ColumnDim()
let vs = Array.zeroCreate<float> (rowDim.Size*columnDim.Size)
member x.RowDim = rowDim
member x.ColumnDim = columnDim
member x.Values = vs
end
Finally this allows us to write code like this:
let m76 = Matrix<Dim7, Dim6> ()
let v6 = Vector<Dim6> ()
let v7 = apply m76 v6 // Vector<Dim7>
// Doesn't compile because v7 has the wrong dimension
let vv = apply m76 v7
If you need a wide range of dimensions (because you have an algebra increments/decrements the dimensions of vectors/matrices) you could support that using some smart variant of church numerals.
If this is usable or not is entirely up the reader I think.
PS.
Perhaps unit of measures could have been used for this as well if they applied to more types than floats.
The general term for what you're looking for is dependent types, but F# does not support them.
I've seen an experiment in using type providers to mimic one particular flavor of dependent types (constraining the domain of a primitive type), but I wouldn't expect it to be possible to achieve what you want using type providers in their current form. They seem to be too whimsical for that.
Print format strings appear to be doing that (and in fact printers are a "Hello World" application for dependent types), but actually they work because they get special treatment by the compiler, and the mechanism for that is not extensible.
You're doomed to ensure correct lengths at runtime.
My best bet would be to use structs to encode actual vectors and ensure correctness on the API level that way, map them to arrays at the point where you're interacting with those matrix algebra libraries, then map the results back to structs with ample assertions when done.
The comment from #Justanothermetaprogrammer qualifies as an answer. Here is how it works in the real example. The matrix implementation in the example is based on MathNet.Numerics.LinearAlgebra:
open MathNet.Numerics.LinearAlgebra
type RealMatrix2x2 =
| RealMatrix2x2 of Matrix<double>
static member private createInternal (a : #seq<#seq<double>>) =
matrix a |> RealMatrix2x2
static member create
(
(a11, a12),
(a21, a22)
) =
RealMatrix2x2.createInternal
[|
[| a11; a12|]
[| a21; a22|]
|]
let m2 =
(
(1., 2.),
(3., 4.)
)
|> RealMatrix2x2.create
The tuple signatures and "re-mapping" into #seq<#seq<double>> can be easily code-generated using, for example, Excel or any other convenient tool for as many dimensions as necessary. In fact, the whole class along with any other necessary operator overrides (like multiplication of RealMatrix2x2 by RealMatrix2x2, ...) can be code generated for all necessary dimensions.

Dask Delayed ignores name for dependent variables

When creating a graph of calculations using delayed I'm trying to assign names so that if I visualize the graph it's readable. However, for delayed variables that are dependent on functions the name parameter doesn't seem to affect the key. Here's a toy example:
def calc_avg(a, b):
return pd.concat([a, b], axis=1).mean(axis=1)
def calc_ratio(a, b):
return a / b
a = delayed(pd.Series(np.random.rand(10)), name='a')
b = delayed(pd.Series(np.random.rand(10)), name='b')
c = delayed(pd.Series(np.random.rand(10)), name='c')
x = delayed(calc_avg, name='avg_result')(a,b)
y = delayed(calc_ratio, name='ratio_result')(x,c)
y.visualize()
You can see the visualization here (I can't embed images), but rather than seeing 'avg_result' I see 'calc_avg-#0' and rather than see 'ratio_result' I see 'calc_ratio-#1'. If I look at x.key or y.key they do not match the names that I provided. Is this the expected behavior?
The key of a dask result needs to be unique for every combination of the function that was delayed, and the inputs you give it. What you see above is the expected behaviour: you are naming the function, but a call with different inputs would expect a different output, so the key must be different.
You can specify the key you'd like associated not when you define the delayed function, but when you call it:
x = delayed(calc_avg)(a, b, dask_key_name='avg_result')
y = delayed(calc_ratio)(x, c, dask_key_name='ratio_result')

Immutable members on objects

I have an object that can be neatly described by a discriminated union. The tree that it represents has some properties that can be easily updated when the tree is modified (but remaining immutable) but that are relatively expensive to recalculate.
I would like to store those properties along with the object as cached values but I don't want to put them into each of the discriminated union cases so I figured a member variable would fit here.
The question is then, how do I change the member value (when I modify the tree) without mutating the actual object? I know I could modify the tree and then mutate that copy without ruining purity but that seems like a wrong way to go about it to me. It would make sense to me if there was some predefined way to change a property but so that the result of the operation is a new object with that property changed.
To clarify, when I say modify I mean doing it in a functional way. Like (::) "appends" to the beginning of a list. I'm not sure what the correct terminology is here.
F# actually has syntax for copy and update records.
The syntax looks like this:
let myRecord3 = { myRecord2 with Y = 100; Z = 2 }
(example from the MSDN records page - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd233184.aspx).
This allows the record type to be immutable, and for large parts of it to be preserved, whilst only a small part is updated.
The cleanest way to go about it would really be to carry the 'cached' value attached to the DU (as part of the case) in one way or another. I could think of several ways to implement this, I'll just give you one, where there are separate cases for the cached and non-cached modes:
type Fraction =
| Frac of int * int
| CachedFrac of (int * int) * decimal
member this.AsFrac =
match this with
| Frac _ -> this
| CachedFrac (tup, _) -> Frac tup
An entirely different option would be to keep the cached values in a separate dictionary, this is something that makes sense if all you want to do is save some time recalculating them.
module FracCache =
let cache = System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary<Fraction, decimal>()
let modify (oldFrac: Fraction) (newFrac: Fraction) =
cache.[newFrac] <- cache.[oldFrac] + 1 // need to check if oldFrac has a cached value as well.
Basically what memoize would give you plus you have more control over it.

f# deedle filter data frame based on a list

I wanted to filter a Deedle dataframe based on a list of values how would I go about doing this?
I had an idea to use the following code below:
let d= df1|>filterRowValues(fun row -> row.GetAs<float>("ts") = timex)
However the issue with this is that it is only based on one variable, I then thought of combining this with a for loop and an append function:
for i in 0.. recd.length -1 do
df2.Append(df1|>filterRowValues(fun row -> row.GetAs<float>("ts") = recd.[i]))
This does not work either however and there must be a better way of doing this without using a for loop. In R I could for instance using an %in%.
You can use the F# set type to create a set of the values that you are interested. In the filtering, you can then check whether the set contains the actual value for the row.
For example, say that you have recd of type seq<float>. Then you should be able to write:
let recdSet = set recd
let d = df1 |> Frame.filterRowValues (fun row ->
recdSet.Contains(row.GetAs<float>("ts"))
Some other things that might be useful:
You can replace row.GetAs<float>("ts") with just row?ts (which always returns float and works only when you have a fixed name, like "ts", but it makes the code nicer)
Comparing float values might not be the best thing to do (because of floating point imprecisions, this might not always work as expected).

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