Establishing quine type in scala - scala

I have to parse a string with syntax
lazy val expr: Parser[Term ~ Option[<recursion>]] = term ~ opt(expr)
You see, it uses itself to parse subexpressions. But what does this type result in? In order to reproduce the problem, I created a somewhat similar problem
def quine(depth: Int, result: (Any, Option[Any])): (Any, Option[Any]) =
if (depth == 0) result else {quine(depth - 1, (depth, Some(result)))}
quine(5, (true, None))
As you see, I used Any since I do not know how to give exact type.
The lists somehow define proto type List[A], extended by Cons[A](head: A, tail: List[A]) and some magic Nil. This allows the list to recur somehow. But, what should I do in my case?

I am not sure what you are trying to do here, because your result type is different between the function definition and invocation (the first element is Int in the former and Boolean in the latter, that can't work).
But, provided that was just a typo, something like this should do the trick:
case class Quine(n: Int, q: Option[Quine])
def quine(depth: Int, result: Quine): Quine =
if (depth == 0) result else
quine(depth - 1, Quine(depth, Some(result)))
quine(5, Quine(6, None))

Related

Type parameters applied to Scala Function

I am trying to understand the type parameters when applied to a function.
I would like to use Generic Types in the below method but using String and Int for my understanding.
When I define a function as below
def myfunc[Int](f:String => Int):Int = {
Integer.min(1,2)
}
it complains
found : scala.this.Int
required: Int&0
Integer.min(1,2)
However if I remove the return type of the function ( which I understand is not required), it compiles fine.
I am not able to infer why removing the return type makes the compilation successful.
Appreciate your help.
-Amit
Try
def myfunc(f:String => Int):Int = {
Integer.min(1,2)
}
When you write def myfunc[Int](f:String => Int):Int you declare type parameter Int, which hides standard type scala.Int. This is the same as if you declared def myfunc[A](f:String => A):A. When you remove return type it's inferred to be scala.Int, i.e. def myfunc[A](f:String => A) is def myfunc[A](f:String => A):Int
If you want to use generics, first you have to understand that the name of the variable types starts capitalized and they are names, just that so [Int] in your function is the name of the type variable, an example:
object Main extends App{
val f: String => Int = s => 4
println(myfunc(f, "nothing useful"))
def myfunc[A,B](f:A => B, x: A):B = {
f(x)
}
}
here the names are A and B and the return type is of type B
Question: What's the difference between these 3 methods?
def myfunc1[X](f:String => X):X =
Integer.min(1,2)
def myfunc2[Int](f:String => Int):Int =
Integer.min(1,2)
def myfunc3[IDontGetTypeParameters](f:String => IDontGetTypeParameters):IDontGetTypeParameters =
Integer.min(1,2)
Answer: Nothing. From the compiler's point of view they are the same, and they fail to compile for the same reason: each is defined to return the type of the type parameter but tries to return an integer (Scala.Int) instead.
A quick one liner:
def myfunc(f:String => Int):Int = Integer.min(1,2)
It's good trying to make your own examples, but have you tried any examples from books, articles or tutorials? There's probably a good one in Scala for the Impatient by Cay Horstmann.
Here's a decent example from the Tour de Scala:
def listOfDuplicates[A](x: A, length: Int): List[A] = {
if (length < 1)
Nil
else
x :: listOfDuplicates(x, length - 1)
}
Sometimes you can omit the type parameter, but let's ignore that for now and declare the types explicitly:
listOfDuplicates[Int](43, 5) // Should give a list with 43 five times
listOfDuplicates[String]("Hello, world! ", 3) // "Hello, world!" thrice
listOfDuplicates[(Int, Int)]((0, 1), 8) // The pair (0, 1) eight times
This shows that A can be Int, String, (Int, Int) or just about anything else we can think of. Not sure you'd ever have a practical need for this, but you can even do something like this:
def wrapLength(str: String): Int = str.length
listOfDuplicates[String => Int](wrapLength(_), 2)
Here's a Scastie snippet in which you can play around with this.
Your generic type name shouldn't be one of the reserved words in Scala. Int itself is a reserved word for a type.
In this cases, for simplicity and understanding, we use some basic characters like T or R as the generic type if you really keen to use generics for other functions.

Protobuf to scala conversion

I have in protobuf
message ResultsPb{
repeated int32 Result = 1;
}
and the corresponding in scala
Results: List[Int]
I’m new to this and I’m having a hard time finding the proper way to convert from one to the other. Here is what I've come up with so far but not sure at all of that. First def doesn't build, second def do build.
def toResults(resultsPb: Option[ResultsPb]): List[Int] ={
List[Int](resultsPb.Result)
}
def fromResults(results: List[Int]): Option[ResultsPb] ={
Some(ResultsPb (results.toSeq))
}
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
def toResults(resultsPb: Option[ResultsPb]): List[Int] ={
resultsPb.toList.flatMap(_.Result)
}
def fromResults(results: List[Int]): Option[ResultsPb] ={
Some(results).filter(_.nonEmpty).map(t => ResultPb(t))
}
Update
So, to convert optional proto class to its argument you need
to check that option is not empty
extract data from class
this could be done as Bob proposed (with pattern matching), or simplier with flatMap (but before you need to convert Option to Seq/List to satisfy type check)
In second method, again you can do it with if statement (checking if List is empty), with matching (checking the same with "case _ :: Nil => ... case Nil =>") or as I proposed with filtering empty result and getting None automatically in this case.

Enforcing non-emptyness of scala varargs at compile time

I have a function that expects a variable number of parameters of the same type, which sounds like the textbook use case for varargs:
def myFunc[A](as: A*) = ???
The problem I have is that myFunc cannot accept empty parameter lists. There's a trivial way of enforcing that at runtime:
def myFunc[A](as: A*) = {
require(as.nonEmpty)
???
}
The problem with that is that it happens at runtime, as opposed to compile time. I would like the compiler to reject myFunc().
One possible solution would be:
def myFunc[A](head: A, tail: A*) = ???
And this works when myFunc is called with inline arguments, but I'd like users of my library to be able to pass in a List[A], which this syntax makes very awkward.
I could try to have both:
def myFunc[A](head: A, tail: A*) = myFunc(head +: tail)
def myFunc[A](as: A*) = ???
But we're right back where we started: there's now a way of calling myFunc with an empty parameter list.
I'm aware of scalaz's NonEmptyList, but in as much as possible, I'd like to stay with stlib types.
Is there a way to achieve what I have in mind with just the standard library, or do I need to accept some runtime error handling for something that really feels like the compiler should be able to deal with?
What about something like this?
scala> :paste
// Entering paste mode (ctrl-D to finish)
def myFunc()(implicit ev: Nothing) = ???
def myFunc[A](as: A*) = println(as)
// Exiting paste mode, now interpreting.
myFunc: ()(implicit ev: Nothing)Nothing <and> [A](as: A*)Unit
myFunc: ()(implicit ev: Nothing)Nothing <and> [A](as: A*)Unit
scala> myFunc(3)
WrappedArray(3)
scala> myFunc(List(3): _*)
List(3)
scala> myFunc()
<console>:13: error: could not find implicit value for parameter ev: Nothing
myFunc()
^
scala>
Replacing Nothing with a class that has an appropriate implicitNotFound annotation should allow for a sensible error message.
Let's start out with what I think is your base requirement: the ability to define myFunc in some way such that the following occurs at the Scala console when a user provides literals. Then maybe if we can achieve that, we can try to go for varargs.
myFunc(List(1)) // no problem
myFunc(List[Int]()) // compile error!
Moreover, we don't want to have to force users either to split a list into a head and tail or have them convert to a ::.
Well when we're given literals, since we have access to the syntax used to construct the value, we can use macros to verify that a list is non-empty. Moreover, there's already a library that'll do it for us, namely refined!
scala> refineMV[NonEmpty]("Hello")
res2: String Refined NonEmpty = Hello
scala> refineMV[NonEmpty]("")
<console>:39: error: Predicate isEmpty() did not fail.
refineMV[NonEmpty]("")
^
Unfortunately this is still problematic in your case, because you'll need to put refineMV into the body of your function at which point the literal syntactically disappears and macro magic fails.
Okay what about the general case that doesn't rely on syntax?
// Can we do this?
val xs = getListOfIntsFromStdin() // Pretend this function exists
myFunc(xs) // compile error if xs is empty
Well now we're up against a wall; there's no way a compile time error can happen here since the code has already been compiled and yet clearly xs could be empty. We'll have to deal with this case at runtime, either in a type-safe manner with Option and the like or with something like runtime exceptions. But maybe we can do a little better than just throw our hands up in the air. There's two possible paths of improvement.
Somehow provide implicit evidence that xs is nonempty. If the compiler can find that evidence, then great! If not, it's on the user to provide it somehow at runtime.
Track the provenance of xs through your program and statically prove that it must be non-empty. If this cannot be proved, either error out at compile time or somehow force the user to handle the empty case.
Once again, unfortunately this is problematic.
I strongly suspect this is not possible (but this is still only a suspicion and I would be happy to be proved wrong). The reason is that ultimately implicit resolution is type-directed which means that Scala gets the ability to do type-level computation on types, but Scala has no mechanism that I know of to do type-level computation on values (i.e. dependent typing). We require the latter here because List(1, 2, 3) and List[Int]() are indistinguishable at the type level.
Now you're in SMT solver land, which does have some efforts in other languages (hello Liquid Haskell!). Sadly I don't know of any such efforts in Scala (and I imagine it would be a harder task to do in Scala).
The bottom line is that when it comes to error checking there is no free lunch. A compiler can't magically make error handling go away (although it can tell you when you don't strictly need it), the best it can do is yell at you when you forget to handle certain classes of errors, which is itself very valuable. To underscore the no free lunch point, let's return to a language that does have dependent types (Idris) and see how it handles non-empty values of List and the prototypical function that breaks on empty lists, List.head.
First we get a compile error on empty lists
Idris> List.head []
(input):1:11:When checking argument ok to function Prelude.List.head:
Can't find a value of type
NonEmpty []
Good, what about non-empty lists, even if they're obfuscated by a couple of leaps?
Idris> :let x = 5
-- Below is equivalent to
-- val y = identity(Some(x).getOrElse(3))
Idris> :let y = maybe 3 id (Just x)
-- Idris makes a distinction between Natural numbers and Integers
-- Disregarding the Integer to Nat conversion, this is
-- val z = Stream.continually(2).take(y)
Idris> :let z = Stream.take (fromIntegerNat y) (Stream.repeat 2)
Idris> List.head z
2 : Integer
It somehow works! What if we really don't let the Idris compiler know anything about the number we pass along and instead get one at runtime from the user? We blow up with a truly gargantuan error message that starts with When checking argument ok to function Prelude.List.head: Can't find a value of type NonEmpty...
import Data.String
generateN1s : Nat -> List Int
generateN1s x = Stream.take x (Stream.repeat 1)
parseOr0 : String -> Nat
parseOr0 str = case parseInteger str of
Nothing => 0
Just x => fromIntegerNat x
z : IO Int
z = do
x <- getLine
let someNum = parseOr0 x
let firstElem = List.head $ generateN1s someNum -- Compile error here
pure firstElem
Hmmm... well what's the type signature of List.head?
Idris> :t List.head
-- {auto ...} is roughly the same as Scala's implicit
head : (l : List a) -> {auto ok : NonEmpty l} -> a
Ah so we just need to provide a NonEmpty.
data NonEmpty : (xs : List a) -> Type where
IsNonEmpty : NonEmpty (x :: xs)
Oh a ::. And we're back at square one.
Use scala.collection.immutable.::
:: is the cons of the list
defined in std lib
::[A](head: A, tail: List[A])
use :: to define myFunc
def myFunc[A](list: ::[A]): Int = 1
def myFunc[A](head: A, tail: A*): Int = myFunc(::(head, tail.toList))
Scala REPL
scala> def myFunc[A](list: ::[A]): Int = 1
myFunc: [A](list: scala.collection.immutable.::[A])Int
scala> def myFunc[A](head: A, tail: A*): Int = myFunc(::(head, tail.toList))
myFunc: [A](head: A, tail: A*)Int

HList/KList from class values

I want to be able to create a class/trait that behaves somewhat like an enumeration (HEnum in the first snippet below). I can't use a plain enumeration because each enum value could have a different type (though the container class will be the same): Key[A]. I'd like to be able to construct the enum roughly like this:
class Key[A](val name: String)
object A extends HEnum {
val a = new Key[String]("a")
val b = new Key[Int]("b")
val c = new Key[Float]("c")
}
And then I'd like to be able to perform more or less basic HList operations like:
A.find[String] // returns the first element with type Key[String]
A.find("b") // returns the first element with name "b", type should (hopefully) be Key[Int]
So far I've been playing with an HList as the underlying data structure, but constructing one with the proper type has proven difficult. My most successful attempt looks like this:
class Key[A](val name: String)
object Key {
def apply[A, L <: HList](name: String, l: L): (Key[A], Key[A] :: L) = {
val key = new Key[A](name)
(key, key :: l)
}
}
object A {
val (a, akeys) = Key[String, HNil]("a", HNil)
val (b, bkeys) = Key[Int, Key[String] :: HList]("b", akeys)
val (c, ckeys) = Key[Float, Key[Int] :: HList]("c", bkeys)
val values = ckeys // use this for lookups, etc
def find[A]: Key[A] = values.select[A]
def find[A](name: String): Key[A] = ...
}
The problem here is that the interface is clunky. Adding a new value anywhere besides the end of the list of values is error prone and no matter what, you have to manually update values any time a new value is introduced. My solution without HList involved a List[Key[_]] and error prone/unsafe casting to the proper type when needed.
EDIT
I should also mention that the enum example found here is not particularly helpful to me (although, if that can be adapted, then great). The added compiler checks for exhaustive pattern matches are nice (and I would ultimately want that) but this enum still only allows a homogeneous collection of enum values.

Compile-time Reflection of Nested List: typecheck List[List[Int]] returns List[List[...]]?

I'm using macro annotations to inspect the fields of a class and add a member based on those fields.
e.g.
#AddVal
class A(x: Int)
expands to
class A(x: Int){
val get: Int = x
}
After extracting theValDef, it's tpe field still null so to get the type I have two options:
1) If I call .toString on the type tree, I can see the type, but now I've lost some type-safety
2) If I use c.typecheck on the type tree, I can get the type, but only if it's 1 level deep. List[List[Int]] comes back as List[List[...]]
val fieldType = c.typecheck(q"type T = ${f.tpt}") match {
case x # TypeDef(mods, name, tparams, rhs) => rhs.tpe
}
So, is there a way to recursively typecheck polytypes?
I tried typechecking rhs again but I got The argument types of an anonymous function must be fully known and I'm not sure how to resolve that.
Thanks for taking a look,
Julian
I incorrectly attributed this error to the macro, when in fact there was another underlying macro (a type provider macro) that was failing to provide the proper nested type (in this case the Int).