class Cell(var x: Int)
var c = new Cell(1)
val f1 = () => c.x /* Create a closure that uses c */
def foo(e: Cell) = () => e.x /* foo is a closure generator with its own scope */
// f2 wont do any reference/deep copy
val f2 = foo(c) /* Create another closure that uses c */
val d = c /* Alias c as d */
c = new Cell(10) /* Let c point to a new object */
d.x = d.x + 1 /* Increase d.x (i.e., the former c.x) */
// now c.x refers to 10
println(f1()) /* Prints 10 */
println(f2()) /* Prints 2 */
Here the f2() prints 2 , As scala wont do deep copy, why the value is still persisted as 1, it should be 10.. where i am going wrong
2) I had read smomehere, Closure in scala dont deep copy the objects, they just keep reference to the object. what do it exactly mean
Your example is somewhat tough to understand due to the way you copied it in (it looks like all the code is run when a Cell is created, but you'd get infinite recursion if that were true). The reason f1 and f2 return different results is that they are pointing at different Cells. You are right that when you write:
val d = c
both c and d contain the same reference. But when you write:
c = new Cell(10)
c is now a reference to a new cell, and d won't copy over that reference.
It's easier to see this with REPL, which can print hexadecimal reference locations.
scala> class Cell(var x: Int)
defined class Cell
scala> var a = new Cell(5)
a: Cell = Cell#368239c8
scala> val b = a
b: Cell = Cell#368239c8
We can see that a and b contain references to the same cell.
scala> a.x = 10
a.x: Int = 10
scala> b.x
res0: Int = 10
When we update the class referenced by a, it also updates for b.
scala> a = new Cell(7)
a: Cell = Cell#5b87ed94
scala> b
res1: Cell = Cell#368239c8
scala> a.x
res2: Int = 7
scala> b.x
res3: Int = 10
When we assign our variable a to a new cell, it has a different reference location (it is a different instance of Cell). b still has the same reference (why wouldn't it?).
Related
I have 3 variables that have already been initialized, and I want to assign a new value to all three of them. e.g.
var a = 1
var b = 2
var c = 3
and I want to reassign them to the same value e.g.
a = b = c = 4
But the above expression is invalid. Is there a right way to do this in Scala?
It is possible to slightly shorten the var definition code as follows
var (a, b, c) = (1, 2, 3)
This works because of extractor objects in scala. A tuple of 3 is extracted into 3 components it was created with.
But following does not work becase the extraction is applied on val or var definitions.
(a, b, c) = (4, 4, 4)
You can do this:
var Seq(a, b, c) = Seq.fill(3)(4)
As with Ivan's solution, this only works when declaring vars or vals, not when reassigning. Since the second parameter is computed for each element, it even works well for mutable objects:
import scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer
var Seq(a, b, c) = Seq.fill(3)(ListBuffer[Int]())
a += 1 // Only modifies a, not b or c.
By contrast, something like a = b = c = [] will only create one list in most programming languages (e.g. Python, JavaScript, Java). If you don't want to create your object each time (perhaps because it is immutable and creation is expensive), declare it as val first to prevent this behavior:
val largeObject = ???
var Seq(a, b, c) = Seq.fill(3)(largeObject)
In OCaml, the let...in expression allows you to created a named local variable in an expression rather than a statement. (Yes I know that everything is technically an expression, but Unit return values are fairly useless.) Here's a quick example in OCaml:
let square_the_sum a b = (* function definition *)
let sum = a + b in (* declare a named local called sum *)
sum * sum (* return the value of this expression *)
Here's what I would want the equivalent Scala to look like:
def squareTheSum(a: Int, b: Int): Int =
let sum: Int = a + b in
sum * sum
Is there anything in Scala that I can use to achieve this?
EDIT:
You learn something new every day, and this has been answered before.
object ForwardPipeContainer {
implicit class ForwardPipe[A](val value: A) extends AnyVal {
def |>[B](f: A => B): B = f(value)
}
}
import ForwardPipeContainer._
def squareTheSum(a: Int, b: Int): Int = { a + b } |> { sum => sum * sum }
But I'd say that is not nearly as easy to read, and is not as flexible (it gets awkward with nested lets).
You can nest val and def in a def. There's no special syntax; you don't need a let.
def squareTheSum(a: Int, b: Int): Int = {
val sum = a + b
sum * sum
}
I don't see the readability being any different here at all. But if you want to only create the variable within the expression, you can still do that with curly braces like this:
val a = 2 //> a : Int = 2
val b = 3 //> b : Int = 3
val squareSum = { val sum = a + b; sum * sum } //> squareSum : Int = 25
There is no significant difference here between a semicolon and the word "in" (or you could move the expression to the next line, and pretend that "in" is implied if it makes it more OCaml-like :D).
val squareSum = {
val sum = a + b // in
sum * sum
}
Another, more technical, take on this: Clojure's 'let' equivalent in Scala. I think the resulting structures are pretty obtuse compared to the multi-statement form.
Suppose I want a Scala data structure that implements a 2-dimensional table of counts that can change over time (i.e., individual cells in the table can be incremented or decremented). What should I be using to do this?
I could use a 2-dimensional array:
val x = Array.fill[Int](1, 2) = 0
x(1)(2) += 1
But Arrays are mutable, and I guess I should slightly prefer immutable data structures.
So I thought about using a 2-dimensional Vector:
val x = Vector.fill[Int](1, 2) = 0
// how do I update this? I want to write something like val newX : Vector[Vector[Int]] = x.add((1, 2), 1)
// but I'm not sure how
But I'm not sure how to get a new vector with only a single element changed.
What's the best approach?
Best depends on what your criteria are. The simplest immutable variant is to use a map from (Int,Int) to your count:
var c = (for (i <- 0 to 99; j <- 0 to 99) yield (i,j) -> 0).toMap
Then you access your values with c(i,j) and set them with c += ((i,j) -> n); c += ((i,j) -> (c(i,j)+1)) is a little bit annoying, but it's not too bad.
Faster is to use nested Vectors--by about a factor of 2 to 3, depending on whether you tend to re-set the same element over and over or not--but it has an ugly update method:
var v = Vector.fill(100,100)(0)
v(82)(49) // Easy enough
v = v.updated(82, v(82).updated(49, v(82)(49)+1) // Ouch!
Faster yet (by about 2x) is to have only one vector which you index into:
var u = Vector.fill(100*100)(0)
u(82*100 + 49) // Um, you think I can always remember to do this right?
u = u.updated(82*100 + 49, u(82*100 + 49)+1) // Well, that's actually better
If you don't need immutability and your table size isn't going to change, just use an array as you've shown. It's ~200x faster than the fastest vector solution if all you're doing is incrementing and decrementing an integer.
If you want to do this in a very general and functional (but not necessarily performant) way, you can use lenses. Here's an example of how you could use Scalaz 7's implementation, for example:
import scalaz._
def at[A](i: Int): Lens[Seq[A], A] = Lens.lensg(a => a.updated(i, _), (_(i)))
def at2d[A](i: Int, j: Int) = at[Seq[A]](i) andThen at(j)
And a little bit of setup:
val table = Vector.tabulate(3, 4)(_ + _)
def show[A](t: Seq[Seq[A]]) = t.map(_ mkString " ") mkString "\n"
Which gives us:
scala> show(table)
res0: String =
0 1 2 3
1 2 3 4
2 3 4 5
We can use our lens like this:
scala> show(at2d(1, 2).set(table, 9))
res1: String =
0 1 2 3
1 2 9 4
2 3 4 5
Or we can just get the value at a given cell:
scala> val v: Int = at2d(2, 3).get(table)
v: Int = 5
Or do a lot of more complex things, like apply a function to a particular cell:
scala> show(at2d(2, 2).mod(((_: Int) * 2), table))
res8: String =
0 1 2 3
1 2 3 4
2 3 8 5
And so on.
There isn't a built-in method for this, perhaps because it would require the Vector to know that it contains Vectors, or Vectors or Vectors etc, whereas most methods are generic, and it would require a separate method for each number of dimensions, because you need to specify a co-ordinate arg for each dimension.
However, you can add these yourself; the following will take you up to 4D, although you could just add the bits for 2D if that's all you need:
object UpdatableVector {
implicit def vectorToUpdatableVector2[T](v: Vector[Vector[T]]) = new UpdatableVector2(v)
implicit def vectorToUpdatableVector3[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]) = new UpdatableVector3(v)
implicit def vectorToUpdatableVector4[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]]) = new UpdatableVector4(v)
class UpdatableVector2[T](v: Vector[Vector[T]]) {
def updated2(c1: Int, c2: Int)(newVal: T) =
v.updated(c1, v(c1).updated(c2, newVal))
}
class UpdatableVector3[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]) {
def updated3(c1: Int, c2: Int, c3: Int)(newVal: T) =
v.updated(c1, v(c1).updated2(c2, c3)(newVal))
}
class UpdatableVector4[T](v: Vector[Vector[Vector[Vector[T]]]]) {
def updated4(c1: Int, c2: Int, c3: Int, c4: Int)(newVal: T) =
v.updated(c1, v(c1).updated3(c2, c3, c4)(newVal))
}
}
In Scala 2.10 you don't need the implicit defs and can just add the implicit keyword to the class definitions.
Test:
import UpdatableVector._
val v2 = Vector.fill(2,2)(0)
val r2 = v2.updated2(1,1)(42)
println(r2) // Vector(Vector(0, 0), Vector(0, 42))
val v3 = Vector.fill(2,2,2)(0)
val r3 = v3.updated3(1,1,1)(42)
println(r3) // etc
Hope that's useful.
I have a graph, with each vertex connected to 6 neighbors.
While constructing the graph and making declarations of the connections, I would like to use a syntax like this:
1. val vertex1, vertex2 = new Vertex
2. val index = 3 // a number between 0 and 5
3. vertex1 + index = vertex2
The result should be that vertex2 be declared assigned as index-th neighbor of vertex1, equivalent to:
4. vertex1.neighbors(index) = vertex2
While frobbing with the implementation of Vertex.+, I came up with the following:
5. def +(idx: Int) = neighbors(idx)
which, very surprisingly indeed, did not cause line 3 to be underlined red by my IDE (IntelliJIdea, BTW).
However, compilation of line 3 offsprang the following message:
error: missing arguments for method + in class Vertex;
follow this method with `_' if you want to treat it as a partially applied function
Next, I tried with an extractor, but actually, that doesn't seem to fit the case very well.
Does anybody have any clue if what I'm trying to achieve is anywhat feasible?
Thank you
You probably can achieve what you want by using := instead of =. Take a look at this illustrating repl session:
scala> class X { def +(x:X) = x; def :=(x:X) = x }
defined class X
scala> val a = new X;
a: X = X#7d283b68
scala> val b = new X;
b: X = X#44a06d88
scala> val c = new X;
c: X = X#fb88599
scala> a + b := c
res8: X = X#fb88599
As one of the comments stated, the custom = requires two parameter, for example vertex1(i)=vertex2 is dessugared to vertext.update(i,vertex2) thus forbidding the exact syntax you proposed. On the other hand := is a regular custom operator and a:=b will dessugar to a.:=(b).
Now we still have one consideration to do. Is the precedence going to work as you intent? The answer is yes, according to the Language Specification section 6.12.3. + has higher precedence than :=, so it ends up working as (a+b):=c.
Not exactly what you want, just playing with right-associativity:
scala> class Vertex {
| val neighbors = new Array[Vertex](6)
| def :=< (n: Int) = (this, n)
| def >=: (conn: (Vertex, Int)) {
| val (that, n) = conn
| that.neighbors(n) = this
| this.neighbors((n+3)%6) = that
| }
| }
defined class Vertex
scala> val a, b, c, d = new Vertex
a: Vertex = Vertex#c42aea
b: Vertex = Vertex#dd9f68
c: Vertex = Vertex#ca0c9
d: Vertex = Vertex#10fed2c
scala> a :=<0>=: b ; a :=<1>=: c ; d :=<5>=: a
scala> a.neighbors
res25: Array[Vertex] = Array(Vertex#dd9f68, Vertex#ca0c9, Vertex#10fed2c, null, null, null)
What is the following methods' difference?
def sum1() = 1+2
def sum2(a:Unit) = 1+2
I think they are semantically identical, is it right?
With sum1, you can call it with or without parentheses:
val x = sum1 // x: Int = 3
val y = sum1() // y: Int = 3
But with sum2 you are forced to provide parentheses.. I think that if you call sum2(), you are actually calling sum2 with () as the argument a.
val x2 = sum2 // error
val y2 = sum2() // y2: Int = 3
Note that passing unit as an argument to an expression lets you simulate lazy evaluation in a strict language. By "moving evaluation under a lambda" you ensure that the expression isn't eval'd until the () gets passed in. This can be useful for e.g. auto-memoizing data structures, which collapse from a function to a value the first time they're inspected.
These methods are not identical. Once receives a parameter, the other does not. See here:
scala> sum1(println("Hi, there!"))
<console>:9: error: too many arguments for method sum1: ()Int
sum1(println("Hi, there!"))
^
scala> sum2(println("Hi, there!"))
Hi, there!
res1: Int = 3