Why does Array.fill take an implicit scala.reflect.ClassManifest? - scala

So I'm playing with writing a battlecode player in Scala. In battlecode certain classes are disallowed and there is a runtime exception if you ever try to access them. When I use the Array.fill function I get a message from the battlecode server saying [java] Illegal class: scala/reflect/Manifest$. This is the offending line:
val g_score = Array.fill[Int](rc.getMapWidth(), rc.getMapHeight())(0)
The method takes an implicit ClassManifest argument which has the following documentation:
A ClassManifest[T] is an opaque descriptor for type T. It is used by the compiler
to preserve information necessary for instantiating Arrays in those cases where
the element type is unknown at compile time.
But I do know the type of the array elements at compile time, as shown above I explicitly state that they will be Int. Is there a way to avoid this? To workaround I've written my own version of Array.fill. This seems like a hack. As an aside, does Scala have real 2D arrays? Array.fill seems to return an Array[Array[T]] which is the only way I found to write my own. This also seems inelegant.
Edit: Using Scala 2.9.1

For background information, see this related question: What is a Manifest in Scala and when do you need it?. In this answer, you will find an explanation why manifests are needed for arrays.
In short: Although the JVM uses type erasure, arrays are an exception and need a manifest. Since you could compile your code, that manifest was found (manifests are always available for proper types). Your error occurs at runtime.
I don't know the details of the battlecode server, but there are two possibilities: Either you are running your compiled classes with a binary incompatible version of Scala (difference in major version, e.g. compiled with Scala 2.9 and server uses 2.10). Or the server doesn't even have the scala-library.jar on its class path.
As said in the comment, manifests are deprecated in Scala 2.10 and replaced by ClassTag.
EDIT: So it seems the class loader is artificially restricting the allowed classes. My suggestion would be: Add a helper Java class. You can easily mix Java and Scala code. If it's just about the Int-Array instantiation, you could provide something like:
public static class Helper {
public static int[][] makeArray(int d1, int d2) { return new int[d1][d2](); }
}
(hope that's valid java code, a bit rusty)
Also, have you tried to create the outer array with new Array[Array[Int]](d1), and then iterate to create the inner arrays?

Related

Special grammar in scala

I am very new at Scala and Spark area, and I found a strange grammar usage in the scala inside the Apache beam project and I can't understand.
Here is the strange place:
JavaDStream<Metadata> metadataDStream = mapWithStateDStream.map(new Tuple2MetadataFunction());
// register ReadReportDStream to report information related to this read.
new ReadReportDStream(metadataDStream.dstream(), id, getSourceName(source, id), stepName)
.register();
From the above code, you can see inside the constructor of ReadReportDstream, the first parameter is
metadataDStream.dstream()
If we go inside the dstream() method, you will see the following code:
class JavaDStream[T](val dstream: DStream[T])(implicit val classTag: ClassTag[T])
extends AbstractJavaDStreamLike[T, JavaDStream[T], JavaRDD[T]] {
I am wondering why it uses "metadataDStream.dstream()" in the constructor instead of "metadataDStream.dstream"? What does the "()" do?
It's mostly a question of convention. Methods with empty parameter lists are evaluated for their side-effects. Methods without parameters are assumed to be purely functional, and free of side-effects. You can read more about that here - https://docs.scala-lang.org/style/method-invocation.html (Arity-0 section)
So in that case, we're probably having some side-effects in metadataDStream.dstream(). However, syntactically writing it as metadataDStream.dstream won't be an error.

can`t bind[SttpBackend[Try, Nothing]]

I want to use sttp library with guice(with scalaguice wrapper) in my app. But seems it is not so easy to correctly bind things like SttpBackend[Try, Nothing]
SttpBackend.scala
Try[_] and Try[AnyRef] show some other errors, but still have no idea how it should be done correctly
the error I got:
kinds of the type arguments (scala.util.Try) do not conform to the expected kinds of the type parameters (type T).
[error] scala.util.Try's type parameters do not match type T's expected parameters:
[error] class Try has one type parameter, but type T has none
[error] bind[SttpBackend[Try, Nothing]].toProvider[SttpBackendProvider]
[error] ` ^
SttpBackendProvider looks like:
def get: SttpBackend[Try, Nothing] = TryHttpURLConnectionBackend(opts)
complete example in scastie
interesting that version scalaguice 4.1.0 show this error, but latest 4.2.2 shows error inside it with converting Nothing to JavaType
I believe you hit two different bugs in the Scala-Guice one of which is not fixed yet (and probably even not submitted yet).
To describe those issues I need a fast intro into how Guice and Scala-Guice work. Essentially what Guice do is have a mapping from type onto the factory method for an object of that type. To support some advanced features types are mapped onto some internal "keys" representation and then for each "key" Guice builds a way to construct a corresponding object. Also it is important that generics in Java are implemented using type erasure. That's why when you write something like:
bind(classOf[SttpBackend[Try, Nothing]]).toProvider(classOf[SttpBackendProvider])
in raw-Guice, the "key" actually becomes something like "com.softwaremill.sttp.SttpBackend". Luckily Guice developers have thought about this issue with generics and introduced TypeLiteral[T] so you can convey the information about generics.
Scala type system is more reach than in Java and it has some better reflection support from the compiler. Scala-Guice exploits it to map Scala-types on those more detailed keys automatically. Unfortunately it doesn't always work perfectly.
The first issue is the result of the facts that the type SttpBackend is defined as
trait SttpBackend[R[_], -S]
so it uses it expects its first parameter to be a type constructor; and that originally Scala-Guice used the scala.reflect.Manifest infrastructure. AFAIU such higher-kind types are not representable as Manifest and this is what the error in your question really says.
Luckily Scala has added a new scala.reflect.runtime.universe.TypeTag infrastructure to tackle this issue in a better and more consistent way and the Scala-Guice migrated to its usage. That's why with the newer version of Scala-Guice the compiler error goes away. Unfortunately there is another bug in the Scala-Guice that makes the code fail in runtime and it is a lack of handling of the Nothing Scala type. You see, the Nothing type is a kind of fake one on the JVM. It is one of the things where the Scala type system is more reach than the Java one. There is no direct mapping for Nothing in the JVM world. Luckily there is no way to create any value of the type Nothing. Unfortunately you still can create a classOf[Nothing]. The Scala-to-JVM compiler handles it by using an artificial scala.runtime.Nothing$. It is not a part of the public API, it is implementation details of specifically Scala over JVM. Anyway this means that the Nothing type needs additional handling when converting into the Guice TypeLiteral and there is none. There is for Any the cousin of Nothing but not for Nothing (see the usage of the anyType in TypeConversions.scala).
So there are really two workarounds:
Use raw Java-based syntax for Guice instead of the nice Scala-Guice one:
bind(new TypeLiteral[SttpBackend[Try, Nothing]]() {})
.toInstance(sttpBackend) // or to whatever
See online demo based on your example.
Patch the TypeConversions.scala in the Scala-Guice as in:
private[scalaguice] object TypeConversions {
private val mirror = runtimeMirror(getClass.getClassLoader)
private val anyType = typeOf[Any]
private val nothingType = typeOf[Nothing] // added
...
def scalaTypeToJavaType(scalaType: ScalaType): JavaType = {
scalaType.dealias match {
case `anyType` => classOf[java.lang.Object]
case `nothingType` => classOf[scala.runtime.Nothing$] //added
...
I tried it locally and it seems to fix your example. I didn't do any extensive tests so it might have broken something else.

json4s JValue scala classTag works wrong

In my code, I use classTag[JValue] want to get org.json4s.JsonAST.JValue ,
but actually it returns org.json4s.JsonAST$JValue, it is strange ! why there is the $?
I am new guy use scala ,could someone answer me ? thanks a lot
The name you use to refer to a class/method/etc. in your code and the name it has in bytecode produced by the compiler doesn't have to be the same. Scala compiler needs to be more of this name-mangling than the Java compiler, but this specific case is same for both.
The reason is that inner classes don't really exist on JVM: they are normal classes which have an additional field containing the outer instance. The JVM name of the class looks like <outer_class>$<inner_class>.
In Scala and Java, $ in a name generally indicates it's mangled in some way (though it is a legal character for programmers to use as well).

Why is String different than Int,Boolean,Byte... in scala?

Because I know a little bit Java I was trying to use in every Scala Code some Java types like java.lang.Integer, java.lang.Character, java.lang.Boolean ... and so on. Now people told me "No! For everything in Scala there is an own type, the Java stuff will work - but you should always prefer the Scala types and objects".
Ok now I see, there is everything in Scala that is in Java. Not sure why it is better to use for example Scala Boolean instead of Java Boolean, but fine. If I look at the types I see scala.Boolean, scala.Int, scala.Byte ... and then I look at String but its not scala.String, (well its not even java.lang.String confuse) its just a String. But I thought I should use everything that comes direct from scala. Maybe I do not understand scala correctly, could somebody explain it please?
First, 'well its not even java.lang.String' statement is not quite correct. Plain String name comes from type alias defined in Predef object:
type String = java.lang.String
and insides of Predef are imported in every Scala source, hence you use String instead of full java.lang.String, but in fact they are the same.
java.lang.String is very special class treated by JVM in special way. As #pagoda_5b said, it is declared as final, it is not possible to extend it (and this is good in fact), so Scala library provides a wrapper (RichString) with additional operations and an implicit conversion String -> RichString available by default.
However, there is slightly different situation with Integer, Character, Boolean etc. You see, even though String is treated specially by JVM, it still a plain class whose instances are plain objects. Semantically it is not different from, say, List class.
There is another situation with primitive types. Java int, char, boolean types are not classes, and values of these types are not objects. But Scala is fully object-oriented language, there are no primitive types. It would be possible to use java.lang.{Integer,Boolean,...} everywhere where you need corresponding types, but this would be awfully inefficient because of boxing.
Because of this Scala needed a way to present Java primitive types in object-oriented setting, and so scala.{Int,Boolean,...} classes were introduced. These types are treated specially via Scala compiler - scalac generates code working with primitives when it encounters one of these classes. They also extend AnyVal class, which prevents you from using null as a value for these types. This approach solves the problem with efficiency, leaves java.lang.{Integer,Boolean,...} classes available where you really need boxing, and also provides elegant way to use primitives of another host system (e.g. .NET runtime).
I'm just guessing here
If you look at the docs, you can see that the scala version of primitives gives you all the expected operators that works on numeric types, or boolean types, and sensible conversions, without resorting to boxing-unboxing as for java.lang wrappers.
I think this choice was made to give uniform and natural access to what was expected of primitive types, while at the same time making them Objects as any other scala type.
I suppose that java.lang.String required a different approach, being an Object already, and final in its implementation. So the "path of least pain" was to create an implicit Rich wrapper around it to get missing operations on String, while leaving the rest untouched.
To see it another way, java.lang.String was already good enough as-is, being immutable and what-else.
It's worth mentioning that the other "primitive" types in scala have their own Rich wrappers that provides additional sensible operations.

Scala Case Class Map Expansion

In groovy one can do:
class Foo {
Integer a,b
}
Map map = [a:1,b:2]
def foo = new Foo(map) // map expanded, object created
I understand that Scala is not in any sense of the word, Groovy, but am wondering if map expansion in this context is supported
Simplistically, I tried and failed with:
case class Foo(a:Int, b:Int)
val map = Map("a"-> 1, "b"-> 2)
Foo(map: _*) // no dice, always applied to first property
A related thread that shows possible solutions to the problem.
Now, from what I've been able to dig up, as of Scala 2.9.1 at least, reflection in regard to case classes is basically a no-op. The net effect then appears to be that one is forced into some form of manual object creation, which, given the power of Scala, is somewhat ironic.
I should mention that the use case involves the servlet request parameters map. Specifically, using Lift, Play, Spray, Scalatra, etc., I would like to take the sanitized params map (filtered via routing layer) and bind it to a target case class instance without needing to manually create the object, nor specify its types. This would require "reliable" reflection and implicits like "str2Date" to handle type conversion errors.
Perhaps in 2.10 with the new reflection library, implementing the above will be cake. Only 2 months into Scala, so just scratching the surface; I do not see any straightforward way to pull this off right now (for seasoned Scala developers, maybe doable)
Well, the good news is that Scala's Product interface, implemented by all case classes, actually doesn't make this very hard to do. I'm the author of a Scala serialization library called Salat that supplies some utilities for using pickled Scala signatures to get typed field information
https://github.com/novus/salat - check out some of the utilities in the salat-util package.
Actually, I think this is something that Salat should do - what a good idea.
Re: D.C. Sobral's point about the impossibility of verifying params at compile time - point taken, but in practice this should work at runtime just like deserializing anything else with no guarantees about structure, like JSON or a Mongo DBObject. Also, Salat has utilities to leverage default args where supplied.
This is not possible, because it is impossible to verify at compile time that all parameters were passed in that map.