False is equivalent to 0 and True is equivalent 1 so it's possible to do something like this:
def bool_to_str(value):
"""value should be a bool"""
return ['No', 'Yes'][value]
bool_to_str(True)
Notice how value is bool but is used as an int.
Is this this kind of use Pythonic or should it be avoided?
I'll be the odd voice out (since all answers are decrying the use of the fact that False == 0 and True == 1, as the language guarantees) as I claim that the use of this fact to simplify your code is perfectly fine.
Historically, logical true/false operations tended to simply use 0 for false and 1 for true; in the course of Python 2.2's life-cycle, Guido noticed that too many modules started with assignments such as false = 0; true = 1 and this produced boilerplate and useless variation (the latter because the capitalization of true and false was all over the place -- some used all-caps, some all-lowercase, some cap-initial) and so introduced the bool subclass of int and its True and False constants.
There was quite some pushback at the time since many of us feared that the new type and constants would be used by Python newbies to restrict the language's abilities, but Guido was adamant that we were just being pessimistic: nobody would ever understand Python so badly, for example, as to avoid the perfectly natural use of False and True as list indices, or in a summation, or other such perfectly clear and useful idioms.
The answers to this thread prove we were right: as we feared, a total misunderstanding of the roles of this type and constants has emerged, and people are avoiding, and, worse!, urging others to avoid, perfectly natural Python constructs in favor of useless gyrations.
Fighting against the tide of such misunderstanding, I urge everybody to use Python as Python, not trying to force it into the mold of other languages whose functionality and preferred style are quite different. In Python, True and False are 99.9% like 1 and 0, differing exclusively in their str(...) (and thereby repr(...)) form -- for every other operation except stringification, just feel free to use them without contortions. That goes for indexing, arithmetic, bit operations, etc, etc, etc.
I'm with Alex. False==0 and True==1, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Still, in Python 2.5 and later I'd write the answer to this particular question using Python's conditional expression:
def bool_to_str(value):
return 'Yes' if value else 'No'
That way there's no requirement that the argument is actually a bool -- just as if x: ... accepts any type for x, the bool_to_str() function should do the right thing when it is passed None, a string, a list, or 3.14.
surely:
def bool_to_str(value):
"value should be a bool"
return 'Yes' if value else 'No'
is more readable.
Your code seems inaccurate in some cases:
>>> def bool_to_str(value):
... """value should be a bool"""
... return ['No', 'Yes'][value]
...
>>> bool_to_str(-2)
'No'
And I recommend you to use just the conditional operator for readability:
def bool_to_str(value):
"""value should be a bool"""
return "Yes" if value else "No"
It is actually a feature of the language that False == 0 and True == 1 (it does not depend on the implementation): Is False == 0 and True == 1 in Python an implementation detail or is it guaranteed by the language?
However, I do agree with most of the other answers: there are more readable ways of obtaining the same result as ['No', 'Yes'][value], through the use of the … if value else … or of a dictionary, which have the respective advantages of hinting and stating that value is a boolean.
Plus, the … if value else … follows the usual convention that non-0 is True: it also works even when value == -2 (value is True), as hinted by dahlia. The list and dict approaches are not as robust, in this case, so I would not recommend them.
Using a bool as an int is quite OK because bool is s subclass of int.
>>> isinstance(True, int)
True
>>> isinstance(False, int)
True
About your code: Putting it in a one-line function like that is over the top. Readers need to find your function source or docs and read it (the name of the function doesn't tell you much). This interrupts the flow. Just put it inline and don't use a list (built at run time), use a tuple (built at compile time if the values are constants). Example:
print foo, bar, num_things, ("OK", "Too many!)[num_things > max_things]
Personally I think it depends on how do you want to use this fact, here are two examples
Just simply use boolean as conditional statement is fine. People do this all the time.
a = 0
if a:
do something
However say you want to count how many items has succeed, the code maybe not very friendly for other people to read.
def succeed(val):
if do_something(val):
return True
else:
return False
count = 0
values = [some values to process]
for val in values:
count += succeed(val)
But I do see the production code look like this.
all_successful = all([succeed(val) for val in values])
at_least_one_successful = any([succeed(val) for val in values])
total_number_of_successful = sum([succeed(val) for val in values])
Related
I am currently programming in BCPL for an OS course and wanted to write a simple is_digit() function for validation in a program of mine.
A code snippet of my current code follows:
let is_digit(n) be {
if ((n >= '0') /\ (n <= '9')) then
resultis true;
}
I am aware that BCPL has no notion of types, but how would I be able to accomplish this sort of thing in the language?
Passing in a number yields a false result instead of the expected true.
is_digit() is a function returning a value, rather than a routine, so should use = VALOF rather than BE. Otherwise, the code is OK.
let is_digit(n) = valof {
.....
resultis true
}
Functions that return values should be using valof rather than be, the latter (a routine rather than a function) can be called as a function but the return value you get back from it will be undefined(a).
In addition, you should ensure you return a valid value for every code path. At the moment, a non-digit will not execute a RESULTIS statement, and I'm not entirely certain what happens in that case (so best to be safe).
That means something like this is what you're after, keeping in mind there can be implementation variations, such as & and /\ for and, or {...} and $(...$) for the block delimiters - I've used the ones documented in Martin's latest manual:
LET is_digit(n) = VALOF {
RESULTIS (n >= '0') & (n <= '9')
}
(a) Since Martin Richards is still doing stuff with BCPL, this manual may help in any future questions (or see his home page for a large selection of goodies).
I am intentionally casting an array of boolean values to integers but I get this warning:
Warning: Extension: Conversion from LOGICAL(4) to INTEGER(4) at (1)
which I don't want. Can I either
(1) Turn off that warning in the Makefile?
or (more favorably)
(2) Explicitly make this cast in the code so that the compiler doesn't need to worry?
The code will looking something like this:
A = (B.eq.0)
where A and B are both size (n,1) integer arrays. B will be filled with integers ranging from 0 to 3. I need to use this type of command again later with something like A = (B.eq.1) and I need A to be an integer array where it is 1 if and only if B is the requested integer, otherwise it should be 0. These should act as boolean values (1 for .true., 0 for .false.), but I am going to be using them in matrix operations and summations where they will be converted to floating point values (when necessary) for division, so logical values are not optimal in this circumstance.
Specifically, I am looking for the fastest, most vectorized version of this command. It is easy to write a wrapper for testing elements, but I want this to be a vectorized operation for efficiency.
I am currently compiling with gfortran, but would like whatever methods are used to also work in ifort as I will be compiling with intel compilers down the road.
update:
Both merge and where work perfectly for the example in question. I will look into performance metrics on these and select the best for vectorization. I am also interested in how this will work with matrices, not just arrays, but that was not my original question so I will post a new one unless someone wants to expand their answer to how this might be adapted for matrices.
I have not found a compiler option to solve (1).
However, the type conversion is pretty simple. The documentation for gfortran specifies that .true. is mapped to 1, and false to 0.
Note that the conversion is not specified by the standard, and different values could be used by other compilers. Specifically, you should not depend on the exact values.
A simple merge will do the trick for scalars and arrays:
program test
integer :: int_sca, int_vec(3)
logical :: log_sca, log_vec(3)
log_sca = .true.
log_vec = [ .true., .false., .true. ]
int_sca = merge( 1, 0, log_sca )
int_vec = merge( 1, 0, log_vec )
print *, int_sca
print *, int_vec
end program
To address your updated question, this is trivial to do with merge:
A = merge(1, 0, B == 0)
This can be performed on scalars and arrays of arbitrary dimensions. For the latter, this can easily be vectorized be the compiler. You should consult the manual of your compiler for that, though.
The where statement in Casey's answer can be extended in the same way.
Since you convert them to floats later on, why not assign them as floats right away? Assuming that A is real, this could look like:
A = merge(1., 0., B == 0)
Another method to compliment #AlexanderVogt is to use the where construct.
program test
implicit none
integer :: int_vec(5)
logical :: log_vec(5)
log_vec = [ .true., .true., .false., .true., .false. ]
where (log_vec)
int_vec = 1
elsewhere
int_vec = 0
end where
print *, log_vec
print *, int_vec
end program test
This will assign 1 to the elements of int_vec that correspond to true elements of log_vec and 0 to the others.
The where construct will work for any rank array.
For this particular example you could avoid the logical all together:
A=1-(3-B)/3
Of course not so good for readability, but it might be ok performance-wise.
Edit, running performance tests this is 2-3 x faster than the where construct, and of course absolutely standards conforming. In fact you can throw in an absolute value and generalize as:
integer,parameter :: h=huge(1)
A=1-(h-abs(B))/h
and still beat the where loop.
I've been told to avoid use of return in Scala, although I'm not sure why.
I've got the following code, and it doesn't seem to return the proper thing unless I put the return keyword in there. Why do I need to put return?
def nextParen(chars: List[Char]): List[Char] =
for(i <- 0 to chars.size - 1) {
if(chars(i) == '(' || chars(i) == ')') {
return chars.slice(i, chars.size) // return HERE!
}
}
List.empty
}
The argument for avoiding return is that it leads to code that is less readable, and not refactor-safe. It's not an absolute rule, if you find an algorithm that's best expressed that way, but usually code can be made clearer by writing it as an expression.
This particular code looks to be equivalent to:
def nextParen(chars: List[Char]) =
chars.dropWhile{c => c != '(' && c != ')'}
In general, try to focus on writing expressions rather than procedures; rather than telling the compiler what steps it should take, tell it what the value is. Even if you didn't know about dropWhile, you could write the loop as a fold (e.g. foldLeft) that says what to do at each element of the list, and then the case where the list is empty at the end would fall out naturally, rather than needing two different branches for where there is a match and where there isn't.
There's nothing wrong with using return when it clearly expresses your intent in a good algorithm. However, you should be cautious about using it because it isn't necessary, and most things you want to do already have decent implementations in the collections library.
So, for example, your code works but is O(n^2) in the size of the list because you're indexing into a linear data structure. It's much better to use
chars.dropWhile(c => c != '(' && c != ')')
or if you don't know about that, any of a huge number of alternatives:
val i = chars.indexWhere(c => c == '(' || c == ')')
if (i < 0) chars take 0 else chars drop i
var found = false
chars.filter(c => found || { found = (c == '(' || c == ')'); found })
You can probably come up with half a dozen more without trying too hard. (Fold with an indicator, for/yield with an if clause, span, etc.)
So the best reason to not use return is that you should know your library. Usually you don't need it; it's better to use a stock method that computes what you want.
You are using a for in the imperative sense above. You don't have to use a return if you use it in a more functional sense i.e., as a for-yield or fold or takeWhile.
I think one of the biggest thing to wrap your head around when you move from imperative to functional (side-effect free) is the notion that you can express your code a sequence of expressions, each of which evaluates to a value. For example, a for-yield expression evaluates to a value. So in an imperative world you are executing a sequence of statements that is changing the state (data structures, console etc) around you.
PS: I've used a lot of terms (e.g., side-effect, for-yield, value) that may sound unfamiliar to a new Scala programmer. But with more experience they will make more sense. I would highly recommend this book - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
I'm new here. After reading through how to ask and format, I hope this will be an OK question. I'm not very skilled in perl, but it is the programming language what I known most.
I trying apply Perl to real life but I didn't get an great understanding - especially not from my wife. I tell her that:
if she didn't bring to me 3 beers in the evening, that means I got zero (or nothing) beers.
As you probably guessed, without much success. :(
Now factually. From perlop:
Unary "!" performs logical negation, that is, "not".
Languages, what have boolean types (what can have only two "values") is OK:
if it is not the one value -> must be the another one.
so naturally:
!true -> false
!false -> true
But perl doesn't have boolean variables - have only a truth system, whrere everything is not 0, '0' undef, '' is TRUE. Problem comes, when applying logical negation to an not logical value e.g. numbers.
E.g. If some number IS NOT 3, thats mean it IS ZERO or empty, instead of the real life meaning, where if something is NOT 3, mean it can be anything but 3 (e.g. zero too).
So the next code:
use 5.014;
use Strictures;
my $not_3beers = !3;
say defined($not_3beers) ? "defined, value>$not_3beers<" : "undefined";
say $not_3beers ? "TRUE" : "FALSE";
my $not_4beers = !4;
printf qq{What is not 3 nor 4 mean: They're same value: %d!\n}, $not_3beers if( $not_3beers == $not_4beers );
say qq(What is not 3 nor 4 mean: #{[ $not_3beers ? "some bears" : "no bears" ]}!) if( $not_3beers eq $not_4beers );
say ' $not_3beers>', $not_3beers, "<";
say '-$not_3beers>', -$not_3beers, "<";
say '+$not_3beers>', -$not_3beers, "<";
prints:
defined, value><
FALSE
What is not 3 nor 4 mean: They're same value: 0!
What is not 3 nor 4 mean: no bears!
$not_3beers><
-$not_3beers>0<
+$not_3beers>0<
Moreover:
perl -E 'say !!4'
what is not not 4 IS 1, instead of 4!
The above statements with wife are "false" (mean 0) :), but really trying teach my son Perl and he, after a while, asked my wife: why, if something is not 3 mean it is 0 ? .
So the questions are:
how to explain this to my son
why perl has this design, so why !0 is everytime 1
Is here something "behind" what requires than !0 is not any random number, but 0.
as I already said, I don't know well other languages - in every language is !3 == 0?
I think you are focussing to much on negation and too little on what Perl booleans mean.
Historical/Implementation Perspective
What is truth? The detection of a higher voltage that x Volts.
On a higher abstraction level: If this bit here is set.
The abstraction of a sequence of bits can be considered an integer. Is this integer false? Yes, if no bit is set, i.e. the integer is zero.
A hardware-oriented language will likely use this definition of truth, e.g. C, and all C descendants incl Perl.
The negation of 0 could be bitwise negation—all bits are flipped to 1—, or we just set the last bit to 1. The results would usually be decoded as integers -1 and 1 respectively, but the latter is more energy efficient.
Pragmatic Perspective
It is convenient to think of all numbers but zero as true when we deal with counts:
my $wordcount = ...;
if ($wordcount) {
say "We found $wordcount words";
} else {
say "There were no words";
}
or
say "The array is empty" unless #array; # notice scalar context
A pragmatic language like Perl will likely consider zero to be false.
Mathematical Perspective
There is no reason for any number to be false, every number is a well-defined entity. Truth or falseness emerges solely through predicates, expressions which can be true or false. Only this truth value can be negated. E.g.
¬(x ≤ y) where x = 2, y = 3
is false. Many languages which have a strong foundation in maths won't consider anything false but a special false value. In Lisps, '() or nil is usually false, but 0 will usually be true. That is, a value is only true if it is not nil!
In such mathematical languages, !3 == 0 is likely a type error.
Re: Beers
Beers are good. Any number of beers are good, as long as you have one:
my $beers = ...;
if (not $beers) {
say "Another one!";
} else {
say "Aaah, this is good.";
}
Boolification of a beer-counting variable just tells us if you have any beers. Consider !! to be a boolification operator:
my $enough_beer = !! $beers;
The boolification doesn't concern itself with the exact amount. But maybe any number ≥ 3 is good. Then:
my $enough_beer = ($beers >= 3);
The negation is not enough beer:
my $not_enough_beer = not($beers >= 3);
or
my $not_enough_beer = not $beers;
fetch_beer() if $not_enough_beer;
Sets
A Perl scalar does not symbolize a whole universe of things. Especially, not 3 is not the set of all entities that are not three. Is the expression 3 a truthy value? Yes. Therefore, not 3 is a falsey value.
The suggested behaviour of 4 == not 3 to be true is likely undesirable: 4 and “all things that are not three” are not equal, the four is just one of many things that are not three. We should write it correctly:
4 != 3 # four is not equal to three
or
not( 4 == 3 ) # the same
It might help to think of ! and not as logical-negation-of, but not as except.
How to teach
It might be worth introducing mathematical predicates: expressions which can be true or false. If we only ever “create” truthness by explicit tests, e.g. length($str) > 0, then your issues don't arise. We can name the results: my $predicate = (1 < 2), but we can decide to never print them out, instead: print $predicate ? "True" : "False". This sidesteps the problem of considering special representations of true or false.
Considering values to be true/false directly would then only be a shortcut, e.g. foo if $x can considered to be a shortcut for
foo if defined $x and length($x) > 0 and $x != 0;
Perl is all about shortcuts.
Teaching these shortcuts, and the various contexts of perl and where they turn up (numeric/string/boolean operators) could be helpful.
List Context
Even-sized List Context
Scalar Context
Numeric Context
String Context
Boolean Context
Void Context
as I already said, I don't know well other languages - in every language is !3 == 0?
Yes. In C (and thus C++), it's the same.
void main() {
int i = 3;
int n = !i;
int nn = !n;
printf("!3=%i ; !!3=%i\n", n, nn);
}
Prints (see http://codepad.org/vOkOWcbU )
!3=0 ; !!3=1
how to explain this to my son
Very simple. !3 means "opposite of some non-false value, which is of course false". This is called "context" - in a Boolean context imposed by negation operator, "3" is NOT a number, it's a statement of true/false.
The result is also not a "zero" but merely something that's convenient Perl representation of false - which turns into a zero if used in a numeric context (but an empty string if used in a string context - see the difference between 0 + !3 and !3 . "a")
The Boolean context is just a special kind of scalar context where no conversion to a string or a number is ever performed. (perldoc perldata)
why perl has this design, so why !0 is everytime 1
See above. Among other likely reasons (though I don't know if that was Larry's main reason), C has the same logic and Perl took a lot of its syntax and ideas from C.
For a VERY good underlying technical detail, see the answers here: " What do Perl functions that return Boolean actually return " and here: " Why does Perl use the empty string to represent the boolean false value? "
Is here something "behind" what requires than !0 is not any random number, but 0.
Nothing aside from simplicity of implementation. It's easier to produce a "1" than a random number.
if you're asking a different question of "why is it 1 instead of the original # that was negated to get 0", the answer to that is simple - by the time Perl interpreter gets to negate that zero, it no longer knows/remembers that zero was a result of "!3" as opposed to some other expression that resulted in a value of zero/false.
If you want to test that a number is not 3, then use this:
my_variable != 3;
Using the syntax !3, since ! is a boolean operator, first converts 3 into a boolean (even though perl may not have an official boolean type, it still works this way), which, since it is non-zero, means it gets converted to the equivalent of true. Then, !true yields false, which, when converted back to an integer context, gives 0. Continuing with that logic shows how !!3 converts 3 to true, which then is inverted to false, inverted again back to true, and if this value is used in an integer context, gets converted to 1. This is true of most modern programming languages (although maybe not some of the more logic-centered ones), although the exact syntax may vary some depending on the language...
Logically negating a false value requires some value be chosen to represent the resulting true value. "1" is as good a choice as any. I would say it is not important which value is returned (or conversely, it is important that you not rely on any particular true value being returned).
I have the following code, but I can't get it to work. As soon as I place a while loop inside the case, it's returning a unit, no matter what I change within the brackets.
case While(c, body) =>
while (true) {
eval(Num(1))
}
}
How can I make this while loop return a non-Unit type?
I tried adding brackets around my while condition, but still it doesn't do what it's supposed to.
Any pointers?
Update
A little more background information since I didn't really explain what the code should do, which seems to be handy if I want to receive some help;
I have defined a eval(exp : Exp). This will evaluate a function.
Exp is an abstract class. Extended by several classes like Plus, Minus (few more basic operations) and a IfThenElse(cond : Exp, then : Exp, else : Exp). Last but not least, there's the While(cond: Exp, body: Exp).
Example of how it should be used;
eval(Plus(Num(1),Num(4)) would result in NumValue(5). (Evaluation of Num(v : Value) results in NumValue(v). NumValue extends Value, which is another abstract class).
eval(While(Lt(Num(1),Var("n")), Plus(Num(1), Var("n"))))
Lt(a : Exp, b : Exp) returns NumValue(1) if a < b.
It's probably clear from the other answer that Scala while loops always return Unit. What's nice about Scala is that if it doesn't do what you want, you can always extend it.
Here is the definition of a while-like construct that returns the result of the last iteration (it will throw an exception if the loop is never entered):
def whiley[T](cond : =>Boolean)(body : =>T) : T = {
#scala.annotation.tailrec
def loop(previous : T) : T = if(cond) loop(body) else previous
if(cond) loop(body) else throw new Exception("Loop must be entered at least once.")
}
...and you can then use it as a while. (In fact, the #tailrec annotation will make it compile into the exact same thing as a while loop.)
var x = 10
val atExit = whiley(x > 0) {
val squared = x * x
println(x)
x -= 1
squared
}
println("The last time x was printed, its square was : " + atExit)
(Note that I'm not claiming the construct is useful.)
Which iteration would you expect this loop to return? If you want a Seq of the results of all iterations, use a for expression (also called for comprehension). If you want just the last one, create a var outside the loop, set its value on each iteration, and return that var after the loop. (Also look into other looping constructs that are implemented as functions on different types of collections, like foldLeft and foldRight, which have their own interesting behaviors as far as return value goes.) The Scala while loop returns Unit because there's no sensible one size fits all answer to this question.
(By the way, there's no way for the compiler to know this, but the loop you wrote will never return. If the compiler could theoretically be smart enough to figure out that while(true) never terminates, then the expected return type would be Nothing.)
The only purpose of a while loop is to execute a side-effect. Or put another way, it will always evaluate to Unit.
If you want something meaningful back, why don't you consider using an if-else-expression or a for-expression?
As everyone else and their mothers said, while loops do not return values in Scala. What no one seems to have mentioned is that there's a reason for that: performance.
Returning a value has an impact on performance, so the compiler would have to be smart about when you do need that return value, and when you don't. There are cases where that can be trivially done, but there are complex cases as well. The compiler would have to be smarter, which means it would be slower and more complex. The cost was deemed not worth the benefit.
Now, there are two looping constructs in Scala (all the others are based on these two): while loops and recursion. Scala can optimize tail recursion, and the result is often faster than while loops. Or, otherwise, you can use while loops and get the result back through side effects.