What is the most idiomatic way to achieve function currying?
Eg. in Haskell:
times a b = a * b
-- This can then be used uncurried:
times 2 3 -- Result is 6
-- But there is also auto-currying:
(times 2) 3 -- This works too
In Julia, some built-ins support this:
<(8, 7) # Result is false
<(8)(7) # Same
7 |> <(8) # Same
However, user-defined functions don't automatically have this functionality:
times(a, b) = a * b
times(2, 3) # Result is 6
3 |> times(2) # MethodError: no method matching times(::Int64)
I can manually define a one-argument version and then it works:
times(a) = b -> a * b
But my question is, is there a better way?
why not use curry.jl
times(a, b) = a * b
times_curry = curry(times)
times_curry(5)(2) ---> gives 10
This would be pretty tricky (impossible?) to solve in Julia without a macro, as multiple dispatch means you won't know which function you'll ultimately end up dispatching to until you see all of the arguments. I think the simplest way to implement currying is just with a struct like this:
julia> struct Curry
func::Function
args::Tuple
Curry(func, args...) = new(func, args)
end
julia> (curry::Curry)(x, args...) = Curry(curry.func, curry.args..., x, args...)
julia> (curry::Curry)() = curry.func(curry.args...)
julia> Curry(<)
Curry(<, ())
julia> Curry(<)(2)()
(::Base.Fix2{typeof(<), Int64}) (generic function with 1 method)
julia> Curry(<)(2)(3)()
true
julia> Curry(<, 2)
Curry(<, (2,))
julia> Curry(<, 2, 3)()
true
Basically, calling the Curry with at least one argument creates a new Curry with the new arguments, and calling it with 0 arguments “executes” the whole thing.
Related
I'm trying to build a function that will output an expression to be assigned to a new in-memory function. I might be misinterpreting the capability of metaprogramming but, I'm trying to build a function that generates a math series and assigns it to a function such as:
main.jl
function series(iter)
S = ""
for i in 1:iter
a = "x^$i + "
S = S*a
end
return chop(S, tail=3)
end
So, this will build the pattern and I'm temporarily working with it in the repl:
julia> a = Meta.parse(series(4))
:(x ^ 1 + x ^ 2 + x ^ 3 + x ^ 4)
julia> f =eval(Meta.parse(series(4)))
120
julia> f(x) =eval(Meta.parse(series(4)))
ERROR: cannot define function f; it already has a value
Obviously eval isn't what I'm looking for in this case but, is there another function I can use? Or, is this just not a viable way to accomplish the task in Julia?
The actual error you get has to do nothing with metaprogramming, but with the fact that you are reassigning f, which was assigned a value before:
julia> f = 10
10
julia> f(x) = x + 1
ERROR: cannot define function f; it already has a value
Stacktrace:
[1] top-level scope at none:0
[2] top-level scope at REPL[2]:1
It just doesn't like that. Call either of those variables differently.
Now to the conceptual problem. First, what you do here is not "proper" metaprogramming in Julia: why deal with strings and parsing at all? You can work directly on expressions:
julia> function series(N)
S = Expr(:call, :+)
for i in 1:N
push!(S.args, :(x ^ $i))
end
return S
end
series (generic function with 1 method)
julia> series(3)
:(x ^ 1 + x ^ 2 + x ^ 3)
This makes use of the fact that + belongs to the class of expressions that are automatically collected in repeated applications.
Second, you don't call eval at the appropriate place. I assume you meant to say "give me the function of x, with the body being what series(4) returns". Now, while the following works:
julia> f3(x) = eval(series(4))
f3 (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f3(2)
30
it is not ideal, as you newly compile the body every time the function is called. If you do something like that, it is preferred to expand the code once into the body at function definition:
julia> #eval f2(x) = $(series(4))
f2 (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f2(2)
30
You just need to be careful with hygiene here. All depends on the fact that you know that the generated body is formulated in terms of x, and the function argument matches that. In my opinion, the most Julian way of implementing your idea is through a macro:
julia> macro series(N::Int, x)
S = Expr(:call, :+)
for i in 1:N
push!(S.args, :($x ^ $i))
end
return S
end
#series (macro with 1 method)
julia> #macroexpand #series(4, 2)
:(2 ^ 1 + 2 ^ 2 + 2 ^ 3 + 2 ^ 4)
julia> #series(4, 2)
30
No free variables remaining in the output.
Finally, as has been noted in the comments, there's a function (and corresponding macro) evalpoly in Base which generalizes your use case. Note that this function does not use code generation -- it uses a well-designed generated function, which in combination with the optimizations results in code that is usually equal to the macro-generated code.
Another elegant option would be to use the multiple-dispatch mechanism of Julia and dispatch the generated code on type rather than value.
#generated function series2(p::Val{N}, x) where N
S = Expr(:call, :+)
for i in 1:N
push!(S.args, :(x ^ $i))
end
return S
end
Usage
julia> series2(Val(20), 150.5)
3.5778761722367333e43
julia> series2(Val{20}(), 150.5)
3.5778761722367333e43
This task can be accomplished with comprehensions. I need to RTFM...
https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/arrays/#Generator-Expressions
Consider an existing function in Base, which takes in a variable number of arguments of some abstract type T. I have defined a subtype S<:T and would like to write a method which dispatches if any of the arguments is my subtype S.
As an example, consider function Base.cat, with T being an AbstractArray and S being some MyCustomArray <: AbstractArray.
Desired behaviour:
julia> v = [1, 2, 3];
julia> cat(v, v, v, dims=2)
3×3 Array{Int64,2}:
1 1 1
2 2 2
3 3 3
julia> w = MyCustomArray([1,2,3])
julia> cat(v, v, w, dims=2)
"do something fancy"
Attempt:
function Base.cat(w::MyCustomArray, a::AbstractArray...; dims)
pritnln("do something fancy")
end
But this only works if the first argument is MyCustomArray.
What is an elegant way of achieving this?
I would say that it is not possible to do it cleanly without type piracy (but if it is possible I would also like to learn how).
For example consider cat that you asked about. It has one very general signature in Base (actually not requiring A to be AbstractArray as you write):
julia> methods(cat)
# 1 method for generic function "cat":
[1] cat(A...; dims) in Base at abstractarray.jl:1654
You could write a specific method:
Base.cat(A::AbstractArray...; dims) = ...
and check if any of elements of A is your special array, but this would be type piracy.
Now the problem is that you cannot even write Union{S, T} as since S <: T it will be resolved as just T.
This would mean that you would have to use S explicitly in the signature, but then even:
f(::S, ::T) = ...
f(::T, ::S) = ...
is problematic and a compiler will ask you to define f(::S, ::S) as the above definitions lead to dispatch ambiguity. So, even if you wanted to limit the number of varargs to some maximum number you would have to annotate types for all divisions of A into subsets to avoid dispatch ambiguity (which is doable using macros, but grows the number of required methods exponentially).
For general usage, I concur with Bogumił, but let me make an additional comment. If you have control over how cat is called, you can at least write some kind of trait-dispatch code:
struct MyCustomArray{T, N} <: AbstractArray{T, N}
x::Array{T, N}
end
HasCustom() = Val(false)
HasCustom(::MyCustomArray, rest...) = Val(true)
HasCustom(::AbstractArray, rest...) = HasCustom(rest...)
# `IsCustom` or something would be more elegant, but `Val` is quicker for now
Base.cat(::Val{true}, args...; dims) = println("something fancy")
Base.cat(::Val{false}, args...; dims) = cat(args...; dims=dims)
And the compiler is cool enough to optimize that away:
julia> args = (v, v, w);
julia> #code_warntype cat(HasCustom(args...), args...; dims=2);
Variables
#self#::Core.Compiler.Const(cat, false)
#unused#::Core.Compiler.Const(Val{true}(), false)
args::Tuple{Array{Int64,1},Array{Int64,1},MyCustomArray{Int64,1}}
Body::Nothing
1 ─ %1 = Main.println("something fancy")::Core.Compiler.Const(nothing, false)
└── return %1
If you don't have control over calls to cat, the only resort I can think of to make the above technique work is to overdub methods containing such call, to replace matching calls by the custom implementation. In which case you don't even need to overload cat, but can directly replace it by some mycat doing your fancy stuff.
If I have a function signature like f(args...; kwargs...), how can I get a specific keyword out of kwargs? Naïvely typing kwargs.x does not work:
julia> f(args...; kwargs...) = kwargs.x
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f(x=1)
ERROR: type Pairs has no field x
Stacktrace:
[1] getproperty(::Base.Iterators.Pairs{Symbol,Int64,Tuple{Symbol},NamedTuple{(:x,),Tuple{Int64}}}, ::Symbol) at ./Base.jl:20
[2] #f#7(::Base.Iterators.Pairs{Symbol,Int64,Tuple{Symbol},NamedTuple{(:x,),Tuple{Int64}}}, ::typeof(f)) at ./REPL[2]:1
[3] (::var"#kw##f")(::NamedTuple{(:x,),Tuple{Int64}}, ::typeof(f)) at ./none:0
[4] top-level scope at REPL[3]:1
This question appeared on the JuliaLang Slack channel in the #helpdesk. For an automatic invite to the very helpful julia slack, simply fill out https://slackinvite.julialang.org
The reason this happens is that splatted keyword arguments are not stored in a named tuple by default. We can see how they're stored like so:
julia> g(;kwargs...) = kwargs
g (generic function with 1 method)
julia> g(a=1)
pairs(::NamedTuple) with 1 entry:
:a => 1
julia> g(a=1) |> typeof
Base.Iterators.Pairs{Symbol,Int64,Tuple{Symbol},NamedTuple{(:a,),Tuple{Int64}}}
So the splatted kwargs are instead stored as some sort of iterator object. However, we can easily convert that kwargs iterator to a NamedTuple like so: (;kwargs...) and then access it in the way we'd expect, so your example would translate into
julia> f(args...; kwargs...) = (;kwargs...).x
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f(x=1, y=2)
1
Of course, the more idiomatic way to do this would be to instead write the function as
julia> f(args...; x, kwargs...) = x
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f(x=1, y=2)
1
but this assumes you know the name you want to access (x) at the time when you write the function.
A brief sidenote: If we return to our example of g(;kwargs...) = kwargs, we can ask for the fieldnames of the iterator object the was returned like so:
julia> g(x=1, y=2) |> typeof |> fieldnames
(:data, :itr)
Hm, what is this data field?
julia> g(x=1, y=2).data
(x = 1, y = 2)
Aha! so we can actually get the kwargs as a named tuple using that, i.e. f(;kwargs...) = kwargs.data.x would work, but I wouldn't recommend this approach since it seems to rely on undocumented behaviour, so it may be a mere implementation detail that is not guaranteed to be stable across julia versions.
Is there a way to check if a function has keywords arguments in Julia? I am looking for something like has_kwargs(fun::Function) that would return true if fun has a method with keyword arguments.
The high level idea is to build a function:
function master_fun(foo::Any, fun::Function, ar::Tuple, kw::Tuple)
if has_kwargs(fun)
fun(ar... ; kw...)
else
fun(ar...)
end
end
Basically, #Michael K. Borregaard's suggestion to use try-catch is correct and officially works.
Looking into the unofficial implementation details, I came up with the followng:
haskw(f,tup) = isdefined(typeof(f).name.mt,:kwsorter) &&
length(methods(typeof(f).name.mt.kwsorter,(Vector{Any},typeof(f),tup...)))>0
This function first looks if there is any keyword processing on any method of the generic function, and if so, looks at the specific tuple of types.
For example:
julia> f(x::Int) = 1
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f(x::String ; y="value") = 2
f (generic function with 2 methods)
julia> haskw(f,(Int,))
false
julia> haskw(f,(String,))
true
This should be tested for the specific application, as it probably doesn't work when non-leaf types are involved. As Michael commented, in the question's context the statement would be:
if haskw(fun, typeof.(ar))
...
I don't think you can guarantee that a given function has keyword arguments. Check
f(;x = 3) = println(x)
f(x) = println(2x)
f(3)
#6
f(x = 3)
#3
f(3, x = 3)
#ERROR: MethodError: no method matching f(::Int64; x=3)
#Closest candidates are:
# f(::Any) at REPL[2]:1 got unsupported keyword argument "x"
# f(; x) at REPL[1]:1
So, does the f function have keywords? You can only check for a given method. Note that, in your example above, you'd normally just do
function master_fun(foo, fun::Function, ar::Tuple, kw....)
fun(ar... ; kw...)
end
which should work, and if keywords are passed to a function that does not take them you'd just leave the error reporting to fun. If that is not acceptable you could try to wrap the fun(ar...; kw...) in a try-catch block.
I have a function, f. I want to add a method that takes any container of Strings. For example, I want to write a method that generates the following when needed:
f(xs::Array{String, 1}) = ...
f(xs::DataArray{String, 1}) = ...
f(xs::ITERABLE{String}) = ...
Is this possible to do in Julia's type system? Right now, I'm using a macro to write a specialized method when I need it.
#make_f(Array{String, 1})
#make_f(DataArray{String, 1})
This keeps things DRY, but it feels...wrong.
Can't you just use duck typing? I.e., just assume that you're feeding the function an object of the right type and throw an error if at some point e.g. you don't have a string in your iterable.
This should improve once you can really talk about iterables using traits; currently there is no iterable type. Scott's answer, for example, will not work with a tuple of strings, even though that is iterable.
E.g.
julia> f(x) = string(x...) # just concatenate the strings
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f(("a", "á"))
"aá"
julia> f(["a", "á"])
"aá"
julia> f(["a" "b"; "c" "d"]) # a matrix of strings!
"acbd"
At least in Julia 0.4, the following should work:
julia> abstract Iterable{T} <: AbstractVector{T}
julia> f{T<:Union{Vector{String},Iterable{String}}}(xs::T) = 1
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> x = String["a", "é"]
2-element Array{AbstractString,1}:
"a"
"é"
julia> f(x)
1