I've seen code snippets like these:
export interface IUser {
email?: string;
firstName?: string;
lastName?: string;
}
But why are the variable names suffixed by a question mark? This snippet is part of an example of using mongodb with Typescript.
The answer is probably somewhere out there but I seem to be using the wrong keywords since I can't find it.
In TypeScript, <name>?: <typename> a shorthand for <name>: <typename> | undefined.
This indicates to the type system that a symbol may contain a value of the indicated type or it may contain the value undefined (which is like null).
This is important when the (new in TypeScript 2) --strictNullChecks option is enabled. The documentation on Null- and undefined-aware types option is probably where you should start to understand why this is useful.
It means they can be there but dont have to be. It allows for optional field names. It can be quite common to use.
An example use is allowing users on a website to have an optional display name.
If I am not mistaked, its to indicate that its optional, that means that it can be null.
Related
I was reading the manual for the programming language Maude and I found some keyword sort. The description of it (here) is:
sorts, giving names for the types of data,
does someone know what it means? Is it just defining a type?
sort is "a type definition". In Maude, all types are defining an order-sorted signature. However, the sort will be empty until you declare its signature by means of op.
Does anyone have a better explanation of the match_kinds types for the Opt-In rules of SwiftLint. The documentation gives the enumerated types, but no explanation other than names.
The match_kinds types include:
argument, attribute.builtin, attribute.id, buildconfig.id, buildconfig.keyword, comment, comment.mark, comment.url, doccomment, doccomment.field, identifier, keyword, numberobjectliteral, parameter, placeholder, string, string_interpolation_anchor, typeidentifier
For example, I want to have the scope that searched for specific keywords before specific named function.
I am using vb.net and when I try set the list lettered to lowercase
mylist.lowercase = list.lowercase
I get an error
Lowercase' is ambiguous because multiple kinds of members with this name exist in class 'List'
lowercase is a protected field on the List class so I'm pretty sure you mean the class constant LOWERCASE.
For historical and back-compatibility reasons the VB.Net language is case-insensitive however the rest of CLR is case-sensitive so you have to be conscious of this.
Anyway, when using that specific field you'll run into a conflict so your safest bet is to just use the field's value of True in its place. If this bugs you you can also waste a bunch of extra CPU cycles and jump into reflection but I wouldn't recommend it:
''Bad code but works
mylist.lowercase = GetType(iTextSharp.text.List).GetField("LOWERCASE").GetValue(Nothing)
EDIT
From the comments I now see that it is the left side that is causing you problems. Just use the IsLowercase property instead:
mylist.IsLowercase = True
I'm beginning to teach myself swift and I'm going through examples of games at the moment. I've run across a line of code that I thought was peculiar
scene.scaleMode = .ResizeFill
In languages I'm used to (C / Java) the "." notation is used to reference some sort of structure/ object but I'm not exactly sure what this line of code does as there is no specified object explicitly before the "."
Information regarding clarification of this non-specified "." reference, or when/ how it can be used, would be great
P.S. I'm using sprite kit in Xcode
In Swift, as in the other languages you mentioned, '.' is a member access operator. The syntax you are referring to is a piece of shorthand that Swift allows because it is a type-safe language.
The compiler recognises that the property you are assigning to is of type SKSceneScaleMode and so the value you are assigning must be one of that type's enumerated values - so the enumeration name can be omitted.
To add to PaulW11's answer, what's happening here is only valid syntax for enums, and won't work with any other type (class, struct, method, function). Swift knows the type of the property that you are assigning to is an enum of type SKSceneScaleMode, so lets you refer to the enum member without having to explicitly give the type of the enum (ie SKSceneScaleMode.ResizeFill).
There are some situations where there will be ambiguity, and you will have to give the full name, this will be dependant on the context. For example, you may have two different enum types in scope, that both have a matching member name.
EDIT
Updating this answers as I incorrectly specified this was only applicable to enums, which is not true. There is a good blog post here which explains in more detail
http://ericasadun.com/2015/04/21/swift-occams-code-razor/
At my work we use a typical heavy enterprise stack of Hibernate, Spring, and JSF to handle our application, but after learning Scala I've wanted to try to replicate much of our functionality within a more minimal Scala stack (Squeryl, Scalatra, Scalate) to see if I can decrease code and improve performance (an Achilles heal for us right now).
Often my way of doing things is influenced by our previous stack, so I'm open to advice on a way of doing things that are closer to Scala paradigms. However, I've chosen some of what I do based on previous paradigms we have in the Java code base so that other team members will hopefully be more receptive to the work I'm doing. But here is my question:
We have a domain class like so:
class Person(var firstName: String, var lastName: String)
Within a jade template I make a call like:
.section
- view(fields)
The backing class has a list of fields like so:
class PersonBean(val person: Person) {
val fields: Fields = Fields(person,
List(
Text(person.firstName),
Text(person.lastName)
))
}
Fields has a base object (person) and a list of Field objects. Its template prints all its fields templates. Text extends Field and its Jade template is supposed to print:
<label for="person:firstName">#{label}</label>: <input type="text" id="person:firstName" value="#{value}" />
Now the #{value} is simply a call to person.firstName. However, to find out the label I reference a ResourceBundle and need to produce a string key. I was thinking of using a naming convention like:
person.firstName.field=First Name
So the problem then becomes, how can I within the Text class (or parent Field class) discover what the parameter being passed in is? Is there a way I can pass in person.firstName and find that it is calling firstName on class Person? And finally, am I going about this completely wrong?
If you want to take a walk on the wild side, there's a (hidden) API in Scala that allows you to grab the syntax tree for a thunk of code - at runtime.
This incantation goes something like:
scala.reflect.Code.lift(f).tree
This should contain all the information you need, and then some, but you'll have your work cut out interpreting the output.
You can also read a bit more on the subject here: Can I get AST from live scala code?
Be warned though... It's rightly classified as experimental, do this at your own risk!
You can never do this anywhere from within Java, so I'm not wholly clear as to how you are just following the idiom you are used to. The obvious reason that this is not possible is that Java is pass-by-value. So in:
public void foo(String s) { ... }
There is no sense that the parameter s is anything other than what it is. It is not person.firstName just because you called foo like:
foo(person.firstName);
Because person.firstName and s are completely separate references!
What you could do is replacing the fields (e.g. firstname) with actual objects, which have a name attribute.
I did something similiar in a recent blog post:http://blog.schauderhaft.de/2011/05/01/binding-scala-objects-to-swing-components/
The property doesn't have a name property (yet), but it is a full object but is still just as easy to use as a field.
I would not be very surprised if the following is complete nonsense:
Make the parameter type of type A that gets passed in not A but Context[A]
create an implicit that turns any A into a Context[A] and while doing so captures the value of the parameter in a call-by-name parameter
then use reflection to inspect the call-by-name parameter that gets passed in
For this to work, you'd need very specific knowledge of how stuff gets turned into call-by-name functions; and how to extract the information you want (if it's present at all).