Overriding `Comparison method violates its general contract` exception - scala

Question

I have a comparator like this:
lazy val seq = mapping.toSeq.sortWith { case ((_, set1), (_, set2)) =>
// Just propose all the most connected nodes first to the users
// But also allow less connected nodes to pop out sometimes
val popOutChance = random.nextDouble <= 0.1D && set2.size > 5
if (popOutChance) set1.size < set2.size else set1.size > set2.size
}
It is my intention to compare sets sizes such that smaller sets may appear higher in a sorted list with 10% chance.
But compiler does not let me do that and throws an Exception: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Comparison method violates its general contract! once I try to use it in runtime. How can I override it?

Answer 1

I think the problem here is that, every time two elements are compared, the outcome is random, thus violating the transitive property required of a comparator function in any sorting algorithm.
For example, let's say that some instance a compares as less than b, and then b compares as less than c. These results should imply that a compares as less than c. However, since your comparisons are stochastic, you can't guarantee that outcome. In fact, you can't even guarantee that a will be less than b next time they're compared.
So don't do that. No sort algorithm can handle it. (Such an approach also violates the referential transparency principle of functional programming and will make your program much harder to reason about.)
Instead, what you need to do is to decorate your map's members with a randomly assigned weighting - before attempting to sort them - so that they can be sorted consistently. However, since this happens at the start of a sort operation, the result of the sort will be different each time, which I think is what you're looking for.
It's not clear what type mapping has in your example, but it appears to be something like: Map[Any, Set[_]]. (You can replace the types as required - it's not that important to this approach. For example, say mapping actually has the type Map[String, Set[SomeClass]], then you would replace references below to Any with String and Set[_] to Set[SomeClass].)
First, we'll create a case class that we'll use to score and compare the map elements. Then we'll map the contents of mapping to a sequence of elements of this case class. Next, we sort those elements. Finally, we extract the tuple from the decorated class. The result should look something like this:
final case class Decorated(x: (Any, Set[_]), rand: Double = random.nextDouble)
extends Ordered[Decorated] {
// Calculate a rank for this element. You'll need to change this to suit your precise
// requirements. Here, if rand is less than 0.1 (a 10% chance), I'm adding 5 to the size;
// otherwise, I'll report the actual size. This allows transitive comparisons, since
// rand doesn't change once defined. Values are negated so bigger sets come to the fore
// when sorted.
private def rank: Int = {
if(rand < 0.1) -(x._2.size + 5)
else -x._2.size
}
// Compare this element with another, by their ranks.
override def compare(that: Decorated): Int = rank.compare(that.rank)
}
// Now sort your mapping elements as follows and convert back to tuples.
lazy val seq = mapping.map(x => Decorated(x)).toSeq.sorted.map(_.x)
This should put the elements with larger sets towards the front, but there's 10% chance that sets appear 5 bigger and so move up the list. The result will be different each time the last line is re-executed, since map will create new random values for each element. However, during sorting, the ranks will be fixed and will not change.
(Note that I'm setting the rank to a negative value. The Ordered[T] trait sorts elements in ascending order, so that - if we sorted purely by set size - smaller sets would come before larger sets. By negating the rank value, sorting will put larger sets before smaller sets. If you don't want this behavior, remove the negations.)