Julia 1.0.0: What does the `=>` operator do? - julia

I see this Stackoverflow code for =>, but when I search Julia 1.0.0 on-line help for "=>", I get zero hits.
replace!(x, 0=>4) # The last expression is the focus of this question.
In the REPL help I get:
help?> =>
search: =>
Pair(x, y)
x => y
Construct a Pair object with type Pair{typeof(x), typeof(y)}. The elements are stored in the fields first and second.
They can also be accessed via iteration.
See also: Dict
Examples
≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡≡
julia> p = "foo" => 7
"foo" => 7
julia> typeof(p)
Pair{String,Int64}
julia> p.first
"foo"
julia> for x in p
println(x)
end
foo
7
What does => do in replace!(x, 0=>4)? Does it create a pair, a replacement of all zeros by fours, or what? Why do I seem to not find it in the Julia 1.0.0 on-line docs?
EDIT
Code added to help me understand #Bill's helpful answer below:
julia> x = [1, 0, 3, 2, 0]
5-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
0
3
2
0
julia> replace!(x, 0=>4)
5-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
4
3
2
4
Edit 2
Besides #Bill's accepted answer, I found #Steven's answer helpful as well. Sorry I could not check them both, but Bill's came in first and they both offered useful information.

"What does => do in replace!(x, 0=>4)? Does it create a pair, a replacement of all zeros by fours, or what?"
It creates a Pair. In the function replace, a Pair in the second argument position means the multiple dispatch of replace() chooses a version of the replace function where, given a numeric array or string x, all items within x fitting the first part of the Pair are replaced with an instance of the second part of the Pair.
You can check the REPL docs for replace for details.

This small example should show how "=>" makes a pair
julia> replace("julia", Pair("u", "o"))
"jolia"
julia> replace("julia", "u" => "o")
"jolia"

"=>" operator means "Change into"
so
julia> replace("hello world",'l' => 'z')
"hezzo worzd"
means Change the string "hello world" using "change" 'l' "into" 'z'
and producing the resultant string "hezzo worzd"
julia> replace( [1,2,3,4,5], 3 => 666 )
5-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
666
4
5

Related

How to get the empty entries from a Dictionary in Julia?

I have some dictionary I have defined which might have values that are empty. Is there a quick way to check to see if any of my key value pairs contain empty entries?
julia> a = Dict(1=>[1,2], 4=>[3,4], 6=>[])
Dict{Int64, Vector{T} where T} with 3 entries:
4 => [3, 4]
6 => Any[]
1 => [1, 2]
You wanted a quick way thus I would recommend:
findall(isempty, a)
One possible concise solution it to use a comprehension and the isempty function which will check this for you as follows:
julia> [k for (k,v) in a if isempty(v)]
1-element Vector{Int64}:
6
julia> filter(p->isempty(p.second), a)
Dict{Int64, Vector{T} where T} with 1 entry:
6 => Any[]
filter takes a function as its first argument and can take a Dictionary as its second argument.
The function is given a Pair of key-value pairs, which has members first (the key) and second (the value). So here, we filter by an anonymous function that checks whether p.second, i.e. the value, isempty, and return only those Pairs where that returns true.
An equivalent, and perhaps better looking, way to do this is:
julia> filter(isempty∘last, a)
Dict{Int64, Vector{T} where T} with 1 entry:
6 => Any[]
And for completeness' sake, if you want to just "check to see if" any of them are empty, you can take a count instead:
if count(isempty∘last, a) > 0
dosomething()
end

Dictionary element-wise operations in Julia

I would like to broadcast an operation to all values of a dictionary. For an array, I know I can broadcast an element-wise operation using:
julia> b1 = [1, 2, 3]
julia> b1./2
3-element Array{Float64,1}:
0.5
1.0
1.5
What is an efficient way of broadcasting the same operation to all values of a dictionary? Say, for the dictionary
a1 = Dict("A"=>1, "B"=>2)
An iteration protocol is defined for both keys and values of dictionaries, so you can just do, eg:
julia> d = Dict("a"=>1, "b"=>2)
Dict{String,Int64} with 2 entries:
"b" => 2
"a" => 1
julia> values(d).^2
2-element Array{Int64,1}:
4
1
If you want to alter the dictionary in-place, use map!, eg:
julia> map!(x->x^2, values(d))
Base.ValueIterator for a Dict{String,Int64} with 2 entries. Values:
4
1
julia> d
Dict{String,Int64} with 2 entries:
"b" => 4
"a" => 1
However, your function must output a type that can be converted back to the dictionary value type. In my example, I'm squaring Int which yields Int. However, in the question you are dividing by 2, which obviously yields Float64. If the float cannot be converted back to an integer, then you'll get an error.
Note, you can broadcast over keys also, e.g.:
julia> f(x) = "hello mr $(x)"
f (generic function with 1 method)
julia> f.(keys(d))
2-element Array{String,1}:
"hello mr b"
"hello mr a"
but this can not be done in-place, i.e. you can't use map! on keys.
Importantly, note that you should not instantiate the collection. Indeed, this would be inefficient. So avoid constructs like: collect(values(d)) ./ 2.

Find indices of non-zero elements from [1,2,0,0,4,0] in julia and create an Arrray with them

I know there is a function that does this, for example:
A = [1,2,0,0,4,0]
find(A)
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
5
I am trying to do it on my own way, however, I am stuck here
for i=1:endof(A)
if A[i] != 0
[]
end
end
Thanks in advance.
Here's one alternative:
function myfind(c)
a = similar(c, Int)
count = 1
#inbounds for i in eachindex(c)
a[count] = i
count += (c[i] != zero(eltype(c)))
end
return resize!(a, count-1)
end
It actually outperformed find for all the cases I tested, though for the very small example vector you posted, the difference was negligible. There is perhaps some performance advantage to avoiding the branch and dynamically growing the index array.
I have notice that the question is really confusion (because is poorly formulated, sorry about that). Therefore, there are two possible answers: one is [1,2,4]which is an array with the non-zero elements; the other is [1,2,5] which is an array of the indices of the non-zero elements.
Let´s begin with the first option
A = [1,2,0,0,4,0]
B = []
for i=1:endof(A)
if A[i] != 0
push!(B,i)
end
end
println(B)
The output is Any[1,2,5]
However, the type is not the one I wanted. Using typeof(B) it shows Array{Any,1} so I added this code:
B = Array{Int64}(B)
println(B)
typeof(B)
And the result is the desired
[1,2,5]
Array{Int64,1}
To improve its efficiency, following with the recommendations in the comments, I have specified the type of B with the eltype() function before the loop as follows:
A1 = [1,2,0,0,4,0] #The default type is Array{Int64,1}
B1 = eltype(A1)[] #Define the type of the 0 element array B with the type of A
#B1 = eltype(typeof(A))[] this is also valid
for i=1:endof(A1)
if A1[i] != 0
push!(B1::Array{Int64,1},i::Int64)
end
end
println(B1)
typeof(B1)
Then, the output is again the desired
[1,2,5]
Array{Int64,1}
The simplest way of doing this is using the function find(). However, since I´m a beginner, I wanted to do it in another way. However, there is another alternative provided by #DNF that outperform find() for the cases he has tested it (see below answers).
The second option, which creates an output matrix with the non-zero elements has been provided by other users (#Harrison Grodin and #P i) in this discussion.
Thanks all of you for the help!
You have a few options here.
Using the strategy you started with, you can use push! inside the for loop.
julia> B = Int[]
0-element Array{Int64,1}
julia> for element = A
if element != 0
push!(B, element)
end
end
julia> B
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
4
You can also opt to use short-circuit evaluation.
julia> for element = A
element != 0 && push!(B, element)
end
julia> for element = A
element == 0 || push!(B, element)
end
Both filter and list comprehensions are valid, as well!
julia> B = [element for element = A if element != 0]
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
4
julia> filter(n -> n != 0, A)
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
4
Edit: Thanks to the OP's comment, I have realized that the desired result is the indices of the nonzero elements, not the elements themselves. This can be achieved simply with the following. :)
julia> find(A)
3-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
5
Just because I don't see a simple solution posted here, this is approach I took to the same problem. I think it is the simplest and most elegant solution. Hope this closes the thread!
julia> A = [1,2,0,0,4,0];
julia> findall(!iszero,A)
3-element Vector{Int64}:
1
2
5

How to pass Dict as the argument to method Julia

Hello i trying create converter method from Disct to Vector in Julia language.
But i receive error, with i can't understand
ERROR: TypeError: Tuple: in parameter, expected Type{T}, got Dict{AbstractString,Int64}
My code
type Family
name::UTF8String
value::Int
end
function convertToVector(a1::Dict{AbstractString, Int64}())
A::Vector{Node}
for k in sort(collect(keys(a1)))
push!(A, Family(a1[k] , k))
end
return A
end
Any idea hot to change convertToVector method ?
There were several typos in the above code, but I think this should work:
# No () after the type of a1
# Also, see comment, better to parameterize function, use concrete type for Dict
function convertToVector{T<:AbstractString}(a1::Dict{T, Int64})
# This is how you create an empty vector to hold Family objects
A = Vector{Family}()
for k in sort(collect(keys(a1)))
# The values passed to the Family constructor were backwards
push!(A, Family(k, a1[k]))
end
A
end
Another way (probably not very quick):
julia> dict = Dict("fred" => 3, "jim" => 4)
Dict{ASCIIString,Int64} with 2 entries:
"fred" => 3
"jim" => 4
julia> Vector{Family}(map(f -> Family(f...), map(x -> collect(x), dict)))
2-element Array{Family,1}:
Family("fred",3)
Family("jim",4)
Perhaps I've been using too much Lisp recently...

Nested list comprehensions in Julia

In python I can do nested list comprehensions, for instance I can flatten the following array thus:
a = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6]]
[i for arr in a for i in arr]
to get [1,2,3,4,5,6]
If I try this syntax in Julia I get:
julia> a
([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9])
julia> [i for arr in a for i in arr]
ERROR: syntax: expected ]
Are nested list comprehensions in Julia possible?
This feature has been added in julia v0.5:
julia> a = ([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9])
([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9])
julia> [i for arr in a for i in arr]
9-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
List comprehensions work a bit differently in Julia:
> [(x,y) for x=1:2, y=3:4]
2x2 Array{(Int64,Int64),2}:
(1,3) (1,4)
(2,3) (2,4)
If a=[[1 2],[3 4],[5 6]] was a multidimensional array, vec would flatten it:
> vec(a)
6-element Array{Int64,1}:
1
2
3
4
5
6
Since a contains tuples, this is a bit more complicated in Julia. This works, but likely isn't the best way to handle it:
function flatten(x, y)
state = start(x)
if state==false
push!(y, x)
else
while !done(x, state)
(item, state) = next(x, state)
flatten(item, y)
end
end
y
end
flatten(x)=flatten(x,Array(Any, 0))
Then, we can run:
> flatten([(1,2),(3,4)])
4-element Array{Any,1}:
1
2
3
4
You can get some mileage out of using the splat operator with the array constructor here (transposing to save space)
julia> a = ([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9])
([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9])
julia> [a...]'
1x9 Array{Int64,2}:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Any reason why you're using a tuple of vectors? It's much simpler with arrays, as Ben has already shown with vec. But you can also use comprehensions pretty simply in either case:
julia> a = ([1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]);
julia> [i for i in hcat(a...)]
9-element Array{Any,1}:
1
2
⋮
The expression hcat(a...) "splats" your tuple and concatenates it into an array. But remember that, unlike Python, Julia uses column-major array semantics. You have three column vectors in your tuple; is that what you intend? (If they were row vectors — delimited by spaces — you could just use [a...] to do the concatenation). Arrays are iterated through all elements, regardless of their dimensionality.
Don't have enough reputation for comment so posting a modification #ben-hammer. Thanks for the example of flatten(), it was helpful to me.
But it did break if the tuples/arrays contained strings. Since strings are iterables the function would further break them down to characters. I had to insert condition to check for ASCIIString to fix that. The code is below
function flatten(x, y)
state = start(x)
if state==false
push!(y, x)
else
if typeof(x) <: String
push!(y, x)
else
while (!done(x, state))
(item, state) = next(x, state)
flatten(item, y)
end
end
end
y
end
flatten(x)=flatten(x,Array(Any, 0))

Resources