I thought that I might be able to do this with quotations - but I can't see how.
Should I just use a table of the functions with their names - or is their a way of doing this?
Thanks.
For more info......
I'm calling a lot of f# functions from excel and I wondered if I could write a f# function
let fs_wrapper (f_name:string) (f_params:list double) =
this bit calls fname with f_params
and then use
=fs_wrapper("my_func", 3.14, 2.71)
in the sheet rather than wrap all the functions separately.
You'll need to use standard .NET Reflection to do this. Quotations aren't going to help, because they represent function calls using standard .NET MethodInfo, so you'll need to use reflection anyway. The only benefit of quotations (compared to naive reflection) is that you can compile them, which could give you better performance (but the compilation isn't perfect).
Depending on your specific scenario (e.g. where are the functions located), you'd have to do something like:
module Functions =
let sin x = sin(x)
let sqrt y = sqrt(y)
open System.Reflection
let moduleInfo =
Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly().GetTypes()
|> Seq.find (fun t -> t.Name = "Functions")
let name = "sin"
moduleInfo.GetMethod(name).Invoke(null, [| box 3.1415 |])
Unless you need some extensibility or have a large number of functions, using a dictionary containing string as a key and function value as the value may be an easier option:
let funcs =
dict [ "sin", Functions.sin;
"sqrt", Functions.sqrt ]
funcs.[name](3.1415)
There are many methods but one way is to use Reflection, for instance:
typeof<int>.GetMethod("ToString", System.Type.EmptyTypes).Invoke(1, null)
typeof<int>.GetMethod("Parse", [|typeof<string>|]).Invoke(null, [|"112"|])
GetMethod optionally takes an array of types that define the signature, but you can skip that if your method is unambiguous.
Following up on what Thomas alluded to, have a look at Using and Abusing the F# Dynamic Lookup Operator by Matthew Podwysocki. It offers a syntactically clean way for doing dynamic lookup in F#.
Related
I seem to often run into cases where I want to generate some complex structure, but a special variation with a member type generated differently.
For example, consider this tree
type Tree<'LeafData,'INodeData> =
| LeafNode of 'LeafData
| InternalNode of 'INodeData * Tree<'LeafData,'INodeData> list
I want to generate cases like
No internal node is childless
There are no leaf-type nodes
Only a limited subset of leaf types are used
These are simple to do if I override all generation of a corresponding child type.
The problem is that it seems register is inherently a thread-level action, and there is no gen-local alternative.
For example, what I want could look like
let limitedLeafs =
gen {
let leafGen = Arb.generate<LeafType> |> Gen.filter isAllowedLeaf
do! registerContextualArb (leafGen |> Arb.fromGen)
return! Arb.generate<Tree<NodeType, LeafType>>
}
This Tree example specifically can work around with some creative type shuffling, but that's not always possible.
It's also possible to use some sort of recursive map that enforces assumptions, but that seems relatively complex if the above is possible. I might be misunderstanding the nature of FsCheck generators though.
Does anyone know how to accomplish this kind of gen-local override?
There's a few options here - I'm assuming you're on FsCheck 2.x but keep scrolling for an option in FsCheck 3.
The first is the most natural one but is more work, which is to break down the generator explicitly to the level you need, and then put humpty dumpty together again. I.e don't rely on the type-based generator derivation so much - if I understand your example correctly that would mean implementing a recursive generator - relying on Arb.generate<LeafType> for the generic types.
Second option - Config has an Arbitrary field which you can use to override Arbitrary instances. These overrides will take effect even if the overridden types are part of the automatically generated ones. So as a sketch you could try:
Check.One ({Config.Quick with Arbitrary = [| typeof<MyLeafArbitrary>) |]) (fun safeTree -> ...)
More extensive example which uses FsCheck.Xunit's PropertyAttribute but the principle is the same, set on the Config instead.
Final option! :) In FsCheck 3 (prerelease) you can configure this via a new (as of yet undocumented) concept ArbMap which makes the map from type to Arbitrary instance explicit, instead of this static global nonsense in 2.x (my bad of course. seemed like a good idea at the time.) The implementation is here which may not tell you all that much - the idea is that you put an ArbMap instance together which contains your "safe" generators for the subparts, then you ArbMap.mergeWith that safe map with ArbMap.defaults (thus overriding the default generators with your safe ones, in the resulting ArbMap) and then you use ArbMap.arbitrary or ArbMap.generate with the resulting map.
Sorry for the long winded explanation - but all in all that should give you the best of both worlds - you can reuse the generic union type generator in FsCheck, while surgically overriding certain types in that context.
FsCheck guidance on this is:
To define a generator that generates a subset of the normal range of values for an existing type, say all the even ints, it makes properties more readable if you define a single-case union case, and register a generator for the new type:
As an example, they suggest you could define arbitrary even integers like this:
type EvenInt = EvenInt of int with
static member op_Explicit(EvenInt i) = i
type ArbitraryModifiers =
static member EvenInt() =
Arb.from<int>
|> Arb.filter (fun i -> i % 2 = 0)
|> Arb.convert EvenInt int
Arb.register<ArbitraryModifiers>() |> ignore
You could then generate and test trees whose leaves are even integers like this:
let ``leaves are even`` (tree : Tree<EvenInt, string>) =
let rec leaves = function
| LeafNode leaf -> [leaf]
| InternalNode (_, children) ->
children |> List.collect leaves
leaves tree
|> Seq.forall (fun (EvenInt leaf) ->
leaf % 2 = 0)
Check.Quick ``leaves are even`` // output: Ok, passed 100 tests.
To be honest, I like your idea of a "gen-local override" better, but I don't think FsCheck supports it.
I constantly call static methods calling the static class, and this seems unnatural to me:
let l = Seq.length myseq
It would be more natural to me to use
let l = myseq.length
you can imagine it is the same for many base class
Is there a way to have all those methods available automatically as instance method, without writing extension methods for each of them ?
Is there a way to have all those methods available automatically as instance method, without writing extension methods for each of them ?
No. And even if you did, you'd lose the benefits of type inference in F#.
In general, there is no way to treat values from modules as if they are instance members. However, in the case of the Seq module, you can find extension member analogs of many of the Seq functions in the System.Linq namespace, so you can do:
open System.Linq
let arr = [| 1 .. 10 |]
let ct = arr.Count()
let arr2 = arr.Select(fun i -> i + 1)
// etc.
How about using the pipe operator?
let l = myseq |> Seq.length
Edit:
Or
let l = myseq.Count()
Edit 2:
As kvb pointed out Count() requires System.Linq
Is it the fact that you don't have Intellisense helping you to see what action is available that bothers you?
Like Umair wrote above, the pipelining style is in a certain way the closest way you're looking for. But indeed, you have to know the right module in which the functions are defined.
This is a pretty simple question, and I just wanted to check that what I'm doing and how I'm interpreting the F# makes sense. If I have the statement
let printRandom =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
Instead of creating printRandom as a function, F# runs it once and then assigns it a value. So, now, when I call printRandom, instead of getting a new random value and printing it, I simply get whatever was returned the first time. I can get around this my defining it as such:
let printRandom() =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
Is this the proper way to draw this distinction between parameter-less functions and values? This seems less than ideal to me. Does it have consequences in currying, composition, etc?
The right way to look at this is that F# has no such thing as parameter-less functions. All functions have to take a parameter, but sometimes you don't care what it is, so you use () (the singleton value of type unit). You could also make a function like this:
let printRandom unused =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
or this:
let printRandom _ =
x = MyApplication.getRandom()
printfn "%d" x
x
But () is the default way to express that you don't use the parameter. It expresses that fact to the caller, because the type is unit -> int not 'a -> int; as well as to the reader, because the call site is printRandom () not printRandom "unused".
Currying and composition do in fact rely on the fact that all functions take one parameter and return one value.
The most common way to write calls with unit, by the way, is with a space, especially in the non .NET relatives of F# like Caml, SML and Haskell. That's because () is a singleton value, not a syntactic thing like it is in C#.
Your analysis is correct.
The first instance defines a value and not a function. I admit this caught me a few times when I started with F# as well. Coming from C# it seems very natural that an assignment expression which contains multiple statements must be a lambda and hence delay evaluated.
This is just not the case in F#. Statements can be almost arbitrarily nested (and it rocks for having locally scoped functions and values). Once you get comfortable with this you start to see it as an advantage as you can create functions and continuations which are inaccessible to the rest of the function.
The second approach is the standard way for creating a function which logically takes no arguments. I don't know the precise terminology the F# team would use for this declaration though (perhaps a function taking a single argument of type unit). So I can't really comment on how it would affect currying.
Is this the proper way to draw this
distinction between parameter-less
functions and values? This seems less
than ideal to me. Does it have
consequences in currying, composition,
etc?
Yes, what you describe is correct.
For what its worth, it has a very interesting consequence able to partially evaluate functions on declaration. Compare these two functions:
// val contains : string -> bool
let contains =
let people = set ["Juliet"; "Joe"; "Bob"; "Jack"]
fun person -> people.Contains(person)
// val contains2 : string -> bool
let contains2 person =
let people = set ["Juliet"; "Joe"; "Bob"; "Jack"]
people.Contains(person)
Both functions produce identical results, contains creates its people set on declaration and reuses it, whereas contains2 creates its people set everytime you call the function. End result: contains is slightly faster. So knowing the distinction here can help you write faster code.
Assignment bodies looking like function bodies have cought a few programmers unaware. You can make things even more interesting by having the assignment return a function:
let foo =
printfn "This runs at startup"
(fun () -> printfn "This runs every time you call foo ()")
I just wrote a blog post about it at http://blog.wezeku.com/2010/08/23/values-functions-and-a-bit-of-both/.
I'm just starting with F# and I want to iterate over a dictionary, getting the keys and values.
So in C#, I'd put:
IDictionary resultSet = test.GetResults;
foreach (DictionaryEntry de in resultSet)
{
Console.WriteLine("Key = {0}, Value = {1}", de.Key, de.Value);
}
I can't seem to find a way to do this in F# (not one that compiles anyway).
Could anybody please suggest the equivalent code in F#?
Cheers,
Crush
What is the type of your dictionary?
If it is non-generic IDictionary as your code snippet suggests, then try the following (In F#, for doesn't implicitly insert conversions, so you need to add Seq.cast<> to get a typed collection that you can easily work with):
for entry in dict |> Seq.cast<DictionaryEntry> do
// use 'entry.Value' and 'entry.Key' here
If you are using generic IDictionary<'K, 'V> then you don't need the call to Seq.cast (if you have any control over the library, this is better than the previous option):
for entry in dict do
// use 'entry.Value' and 'entry.Key' here
If you're using immutable F# Map<'K, 'V> type (which is the best type to use if you're writing functional code in F#) then you can use the solution by Pavel or you can use for loop together with the KeyValue active pattern like this:
for KeyValue(k, v) in dict do
// 'k' is the key, 'v' is the value
In both of the cases, you can use either for or various iter functions. If you need to perform something with side-effects then I would prefer for loop (and this is not the first answer where I am mentioning this :-)), because this is a language construct designed for this purpose. For functional processing you can use various functions like Seq.filter etc..
resultSet |> Map.iter (fun key value ->
printf "Key = %A, Value = %A\n" key value)
(This is a shorter answer than Tomas' one, going to the point.) Dictionaries are mutable, in F# it's more natural to use Maps (immutable). So if you're dealing with map: Map<K,V>, iterate through it this way:
for KeyValue(key,value) in map do
DoStuff key value
I want to create a read-only keyed collection that implements IDictionary<'K, 'V> and IEnumerable<'V>. Taking the obvious approach I get the following error:
This type implements or inherits the same interface at different generic instantiations 'IEnumerable<'V>' and 'IEnumerable<KeyValuePair<'K,'V>>'. This is not permitted in this version of F#.
Is there a different way of achieving this?
EDIT - Since this seems to be an insurmountable limitation of F#, what would be an idiomatic way of achieving this? One thought that comes to mind is providing members that return the desired view of the data, e.g., member x.List : IList<'V> and member x.Dict : IDictionary<'K, 'V>. Object expressions could be used to provide the implementations. Any other ideas?
One relatively easy approach is to expose the implementation of the two interfaces as members of the type you are writing. This can be done quite nicely using object expressions or just by writing a piece of code that constructs some type and returns it as the result. The second approach would look like this:
type MyCollection<'K, 'V when 'K : equality>(keys:list<'K>, values:list<'V>) = //'
member x.Dictionary =
Seq.zip keys values |> dict
member x.Enumerable =
values |> List.toSeq
The first approach (if you want to implement methods of the interfaces directly would look roughly like this:
type MyCollection<'K, 'V when 'K : equality>(keys:list<'K>, values:list<'V>) = //'
member x.Dictionary =
{ new IDictionary<'K, 'V> with
member d.Add(k, v) = ... }
member x.Enumerable =
// Similarly for IEnumerable
values |> List.toSeq
Exposing the implementations as functions in a module as mentioned by kvb is also a great option - I think that many of the standard F# library types actually do both of the options (so that the user can choose the style he/she prefers). This can be added like this:
module MyCollection =
let toDict (a:MyCollection<_, _>) = a.Dictionary
I'm afraid not. The CLR allows implementation of multiple interfaces of course (even of the same base type), but not the F# language. I believe you won't have any problems if you write the class in C#, but F# is going to give you problems in the current version.
As Noldorin says, this is not possible. One idiomatic approach is to provide toSeq and toDict functions on a module with the same name as your type (like List.toSeq, Array.toSeq, etc.).