In Scala, how to deal with heterogeneous list of the same parameterized type - scala

Question

I have an array of Any (in real life, it's a Spark Row, but it's sufficient to isolate the problem)
object Row {
val buffer : Array[Any] = Array(42, 21, true)
}
And I want to apply some operations on its elements.
So, I've defined a simple ADT to define a compute operation on a type A
trait Op[A] {
def cast(a: Any) : A = a.asInstanceOf[A]
def compute(a: A) : A
}
case object Count extends Op[Int] {
override def compute(a: Int): Int = a + 1
}
case object Exist extends Op[Boolean] {
override def compute(a: Boolean): Boolean = a
}
Given that I have a list of all operations and I know which operation is to apply to each element, let's use these operations.
object GenericsOp {
import Row._
val ops = Seq(Count, Exist)
def compute() = {
buffer(0) = ops(0).compute(ops(0).cast(buffer(0)))
buffer(1) = ops(0).compute(ops(0).cast(buffer(1)))
buffer(2) = ops(1).compute(ops(1).cast(buffer(2)))
}
}
By design, for a given op, types are aligned between cast and combine. But unfortunately the following code does not compile. The error is
Type mismatch, expected: _$1, actual: AnyVal
Is there a way to make it work ?
I've found a workaround by using abstract type member instead of type parameter.
object AbstractOp extends App {
import Row._
trait Op {
type A
def compute(a: A) : A
}
case object Count extends Op {
type A = Int
override def compute(a: Int): Int = a + 1
}
case object Exist extends Op {
type A = Boolean
override def compute(a: Boolean): Boolean = a
}
val ops = Seq(Count, Exist)
def compute() = {
val op0 = ops(0)
val op1 = ops(1)
buffer(0) = ops(0).compute(buffer(0).asInstanceOf[op0.A])
buffer(1) = ops(0).compute(buffer(1).asInstanceOf[op0.A])
buffer(2) = ops(1).compute(buffer(2).asInstanceOf[op1.A])
}
}
Is there a better way ?

Answer 1

It seems that your code can be simplified by making Op[A] extend Any => A:
trait Op[A] extends (Any => A) {
def cast(a: Any) : A = a.asInstanceOf[A]
def compute(a: A) : A
def apply(a: Any): A = compute(cast(a))
}
case object Count extends Op[Int] {
override def compute(a: Int): Int = a + 1
}
case object Exist extends Op[Boolean] {
override def compute(a: Boolean): Boolean = a
}
object AbstractOp {
val buffer: Array[Any] = Array(42, 21, true)
val ops: Array[Op[_]] = Array(Count, Count, Exist)
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
for (i <- 0 until buffer.size) {
buffer(i) = ops(i)(buffer(i))
}
println(buffer.mkString("[", ",", "]"))
}
}
Since it's asInstanceOf everywhere anyway, it does not make the code any less safe than what you had previously.
Update
If you cannot change the Op interface, then invoking cast and compute is a bit more cumbersome, but still possible:
trait Op[A] {
def cast(a: Any) : A = a.asInstanceOf[A]
def compute(a: A) : A
}
case object Count extends Op[Int] {
override def compute(a: Int): Int = a + 1
}
case object Exist extends Op[Boolean] {
override def compute(a: Boolean): Boolean = a
}
object AbstractOp {
val buffer: Array[Any] = Array(42, 21, true)
val ops: Array[Op[_]] = Array(Count, Count, Exist)
def main(args: Array[String]): Unit = {
for (i <- 0 until buffer.size) {
buffer(i) = ops(i) match {
case op: Op[t] => op.compute(op.cast(buffer(i)))
}
}
println(buffer.mkString("[", ",", "]"))
}
}
Note the ops(i) match { case op: Opt[t] => ... } part with a type-parameter in the pattern: this allows us to make sure that cast returns a t that is accepted by compute.

Answer 2

As a more general solution than Andrey Tyukin's, you can define the method outside Op, so it works even if Op can't be modified:
def apply[A](op: Op[A], x: Any) = op.compute(op.cast(x))
buffer(0) = apply(ops(0), buffer(0))