I'm a beginner at groovy and I can't seem to understand this code. Can you please tell me how does this code operate?
def list = [ [1,0], [0,1,2] ]
list = list.sort { a,b -> a[0] <=> b[0] }
assert list == [ [0,1,2], [1,0] ]
what I know is the second line should return the value of 1 because of the spaceship operator but what is the use of that? and what type of sort is this? (there are 6 sort methods in the gdk api and i'm not really sure which is one is used here)
The code is using Collection#sort(Closure). Notice that this method has two variants:
If the closure is binary (i.e. it takes two parameters), sort uses it as the typical comparator interface: it should return an negative integer, zero or a positive integer when the first parameter is less than, equal, or grater than the second parameter respectively.
This is the variant that is being used in that piece of code. It is comparing the elements of the list, which are, in turn, lists, by their first element.
If the closure is unary (i.e. it takes only one parameter) it is used to generate the values that are then going to be used for comparison (in some languages this is called a "key" function).
Therefore, the snippet of code you posted can be rewritten as:
def list = [[1,0], [0,1,2]]
list = list.sort { it[0] } // or { it.first() }
assert list == [[0,1,2], [1,0]]
Notice that using this unary-closure variant is very convenient when you want to compare the elements by some value or some "weight" that is calculated the same way for every element.
The sort in your code snippet uses the comparator argument method call - see http://groovy.codehaus.org/groovy-jdk/java/util/Collection.html#sort(java.util.Comparator)
So, you are sorting the collection using your own comparator. Now the comparator simply uses the first element of the inner collection to decide the order of the outer collection.
Related
I want to know what exactly an asterisk does before a variable name in Kotlin.
I saw this (*args) in a Spring boot Kotlin example:
#SpringBootApplication
open class Application {
#Bean
open fun init(repository: CustomerRepository) = CommandLineRunner {
repository.save(Customer("Jack", "Bauer"))
repository.save(Customer("Chloe", "O'Brian"))
repository.save(Customer("Kim", "Bauer"))
repository.save(Customer("David", "Palmer"))
repository.save(Customer("Michelle", "Dessler"))
}
}
fun main(args: Array<String>) {
SpringApplication.run(Application::class.java, *args)
}
The * operator is known as the Spread Operator in Kotlin.
From the Kotlin Reference...
When we call a vararg-function, we can pass arguments one-by-one, e.g. asList(1, 2, 3), or, if we already have an array and want to pass its contents to the function, we use the spread operator (prefix the array with *):
It can be applied to an Array before passing it into a function that accepts varargs.
For Example...
If you have a function that accepts a varied number of arguments...
fun sumOfNumbers(vararg numbers: Int): Int {
return numbers.sum()
}
Use the spread operator to pass an array's elements as the arguments:
val numbers = intArrayOf(2, 3, 4)
val sum = sumOfNumbers(*numbers)
println(sum) // Prints '9'
Notes:
The * operator is also the multiplication operator (of course).
The operator can only be used when passing arguments to a function. The result of the operation cannot be stored since it yields no value (it is purely syntactic sugar).
The operator may confuse some C/C++ programmers at first because it looks like a pointer is being de-referenced. It isn't; Kotlin has no notion of pointers.
The operator can be used in-between other arguments when calling a vararg function. This is demonstrated in the example here.
The operator is similar to the apply function in various functional programming languages.
In addition to the answers that were directly towards "what is this thing!?!", you often have the case where you have a List and want to pass it to a function that is expecting a vararg. For this, the conversion is:
someFunc(x, y, *myList.toTypedArray())
Assuming that last parameter of someFunc is vararg of the same type as the elements in the list.
As described in the documentation this is a spread operator:
When we call a vararg-function, we can pass arguments one-by-one, e.g.
asList(1, 2, 3), or, if we already have an array and want to pass its
contents to the function, we use the spread operator (prefix the array
with *):
val a = arrayOf(1, 2, 3)
val list = asList(-1, 0, *a, 4)
In Java you can pass an array as is but an advantage of unpacking an array with spread operator * is that spread operator lets you combine the values from an array and some fixed values in a single call. Java doesn't support this.
If a function which accept a vararg(Variable number of arguments) parameter like:
fun sum(vararg data:Int)
{
// function body here
}
Now to call this method, we can do:
sum(1,2,3,4,5)
But what if we have these value in an array, like:
val array= intArrayOf(1,2,3,4,5)
then, to call this method we have to use spread operator, like:
sum(*array)
Here, *(spread operator) will pass all content of that array.
*array is equivalent to 1,2,3,4,5
But wait a minute, what if we call it like this: sum(array)
it will give us Type Mismatch compile time error:
Type mismatch.
Required:Int
Found:IntArray
The problem is sum function accept a vararg Int parameter(which accept value like: 1,2,3,4,5) and if we pass array, it will be passed as IntArray.
I really don't understand the following sorting method:
books = ["Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "War and Peace", "Utopia", "A Brief History of Time", "A Wrinkle in Time"]
books.sort! { |firstBook, secondBook| firstBook <=> secondBook }
How does the this work? In the ruby books, they had one parameter for example |x| represent each of the values in the array. If there is more than one parameter (firstBook and secondBook in this example) what does it represent??
Thank you!
The <=> operator returns the result of a comparison.
So "a" <=> "b" returns -1, "b" <=> "a" returns 1, and "a" <=> "a" returns 0.
That's how sort is able to determine the order of elements.
Array#sort (and sort!) called without a block will do comparisons with <=>, so the block is redundant. These all accomplish the same thing:
books.sort!
books.sort_by!{|x| x}
books.sort!{|firstBook, secondBook| firstBook <=> secondBook}
Since you are not overriding the default behavior, the second and third forms are needlessly complicated.
So how does this all work?
The first form sorts the array by using some sorting algorithm -- it's not relevant which one -- which needs to be able to compare two elements to decide which comes first. (More on this below.) It automatically, behind the scenes, follows the same logic as the third line above.
The middle form lets you choose what to sort on. For example: instead of, for each item, just sorting on that item (which is the default), you can sort on that item's length:
books.sort_by!{|title| title.length}
Then books is sorted from shortest title to longest title. If all you are doing is calling a method on each item, there's another shortcut available. This does the same thing:
books.sort_by!(&:length)
In the final form, you have control over the comparison itself. For example, you could sort backwards:
books.sort!{|first, second| second <=> first}
Why does sort need two items passed into the block, and what do they represent?
Array#sort (and sort!) with a block is how you override the comparison step of sorting. Comparison has to happen at some point during a sort in order to figure out what order to put things in. You don't need to override the comparison in most cases, but if you do, this is the form that allows that, so it needs two items passed into the block: the two items that need to be compared right now. Let's look at an example in action:
[4, 3, 2, 1].sort{|x, y| puts "#{x}, #{y}"; x <=> y}
This outputs:
4, 2
2, 1
3, 2
3, 4
This shows us that in this case, sort compared 4 and 2, then 2 and 1, then 3 and 2, and then finally 3 and 4, in order to sort the array. The precise details are irrelevant to this discussion and depend on the sorting algorithm being used, but again, all sorting algorithms need to be able to compare items in order to sort.
The block given inside {} is passed as a comparing function for method sort. |a, b| tells us that this comparing function takes 2 parameters (which is expected number of arguments since we need to compare).
This block is executed for each element in array but if we need one more argument we take next element after this.
See http://ruby-doc.org/core-2.0/Array.html#method-i-sort for an explanation. As for a single-parameter method referred to in your books, I can only guess you were looking at sort_by. Can you give an example?
myitem.inject({}) {|a,b| a[b.one] = b.two; a}
Where:
myitem is a class which holds an array or pair objects (pair objects have two fields in them one and two)
I am not sure what the above code is supposed to do?
Starting with an empty map, set its value for the b.one key to b.two.
In other words, for every item in the "myitem" collection, create a map entry. The key will be an item's "one" value. That map entry's value will be the item's "two" value.
The block given to "inject" receives two parameters. The first is the "accumulator". It's initial value in this case is the empty map passed to "inject". The second parameter is the current item in the collection. In this case, each item in the collection.
The block must return whatever will be used as the next accumulator value, in this case, the map. We want to keep using the same map, so when we're done, the "inject" method will return the map with all the key/value pairs.
Without saving the results of the inject it's a bit worthless.
It's a pedantic way of writing
h = {}
myitem.each { |b| h[b.one] = b.two }
or to be closer to your original code
a = {}
mytem.each { |b| a[b.one] = b.two }
(I personnaly hate this pattern (and people who use it) as it needs the ; a at the end, losing all the functional aspect of inject. (Using a side-effect function inside a 'functional pattern', and then realizing that the later function (a[..]) doesn't return the expecting object is just wrong, IMO).
Inject is normal use to 'fold' a list into a result like
[1,2,3].inject(0) { |sum, x| sum+x }
=> 6 # (0+1+2+3)
here sum is the result of the last call to the block, x is each value on the list and 0 is the initial value of sum.
[2,3].inject(10) { |p,x| p*x }
=> 60 # 10*2*3
etc ...
Hash[my_item.map {|object| [object.one, object.two]}]
is another way to do it.
I decided to get shuffled values from array. for that i used this function, i got it from net, it works fine. But i don't know, how it's works...
any one can help me to understand this?
my code is :
function rand(ar){
return 0.5-Math.random();
}
var ar = [5,10,15,20,25]
ar.sort(rand);
console.log(ar)
I am using this function for getting new shuffled array values from the declared one.
This code is using the supplied rand function as the comparison operator for the Array.Sort method (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4b4fbfhk(VS.85).aspx). Since the Math.random (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/41336409.aspx) function returns a value from 0 (inclusive) to 1 (exclusive), the rand function will return a value from 0.5 (inclusive) to -0.5 (exclusive).
Normally the sortFunction supplied to the Sort method takes 2 arguments that are compared. The sortFunction compares them and returns a value that means:
Negative - The first item is less than the second
Zero - The items are equal
Positive - The first item is greater than the second
As the sort method runs, it uses this comparison to determine which array values should go before the others.
In the case of your code, the rand function's return value is random and has no correlation to the data. This means that, whenever the sort function tries to compare two values in the array, half of the time it will say the first item is less than the second and half the second item will be less than the first. As this is done over the entire length of the array, items are swapped randomly and the whole array becomes randomized.
array.sort() has an optional parameter that is a sorting function, you can pass a function reference to change the order of the array.
Maybe this page can be helpful http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/arraysort.shtml
I can't seem to find a definitive answer on this and I want to make sure I understand this to the "n'th level" :-)
a = { "a" => "Hello", "b" => "World" }
a.count # 2
a.size # 2
a.length # 2
a = [ 10, 20 ]
a.count # 2
a.size # 2
a.length # 2
So which to use? If I want to know if a has more than one element then it doesn't seem to matter but I want to make sure I understand the real difference. This applies to arrays too. I get the same results.
Also, I realize that count/size/length have different meanings with ActiveRecord. I'm mostly interested in pure Ruby (1.92) right now but if anyone wants to chime in on the difference AR makes that would be appreciated as well.
Thanks!
For arrays and hashes size is an alias for length. They are synonyms and do exactly the same thing.
count is more versatile - it can take an element or predicate and count only those items that match.
> [1,2,3].count{|x| x > 2 }
=> 1
In the case where you don't provide a parameter to count it has basically the same effect as calling length. There can be a performance difference though.
We can see from the source code for Array that they do almost exactly the same thing. Here is the C code for the implementation of array.length:
static VALUE
rb_ary_length(VALUE ary)
{
long len = RARRAY_LEN(ary);
return LONG2NUM(len);
}
And here is the relevant part from the implementation of array.count:
static VALUE
rb_ary_count(int argc, VALUE *argv, VALUE ary)
{
long n = 0;
if (argc == 0) {
VALUE *p, *pend;
if (!rb_block_given_p())
return LONG2NUM(RARRAY_LEN(ary));
// etc..
}
}
The code for array.count does a few extra checks but in the end calls the exact same code: LONG2NUM(RARRAY_LEN(ary)).
Hashes (source code) on the other hand don't seem to implement their own optimized version of count so the implementation from Enumerable (source code) is used, which iterates over all the elements and counts them one-by-one.
In general I'd advise using length (or its alias size) rather than count if you want to know how many elements there are altogether.
Regarding ActiveRecord, on the other hand, there are important differences. check out this post:
Counting ActiveRecord associations: count, size or length?
There is a crucial difference for applications which make use of database connections.
When you are using many ORMs (ActiveRecord, DataMapper, etc.) the general understanding is that .size will generate a query that requests all of the items from the database ('select * from mytable') and then give you the number of items resulting, whereas .count will generate a single query ('select count(*) from mytable') which is considerably faster.
Because these ORMs are so prevalent I following the principle of least astonishment. In general if I have something in memory already, then I use .size, and if my code will generate a request to a database (or external service via an API) I use .count.
In most cases (e.g. Array or String) size is an alias for length.
count normally comes from Enumerable and can take an optional predicate block. Thus enumerable.count {cond} is [roughly] (enumerable.select {cond}).length -- it can of course bypass the intermediate structure as it just needs the count of matching predicates.
Note: I am not sure if count forces an evaluation of the enumeration if the block is not specified or if it short-circuits to the length if possible.
Edit (and thanks to Mark's answer!): count without a block (at least for Arrays) does not force an evaluation. I suppose without formal behavior it's "open" for other implementations, if forcing an evaluation without a predicate ever even really makes sense anyway.
I found a good answare at http://blog.hasmanythrough.com/2008/2/27/count-length-size
In ActiveRecord, there are several ways to find out how many records
are in an association, and there are some subtle differences in how
they work.
post.comments.count - Determine the number of elements with an SQL
COUNT query. You can also specify conditions to count only a subset of
the associated elements (e.g. :conditions => {:author_name =>
"josh"}). If you set up a counter cache on the association, #count
will return that cached value instead of executing a new query.
post.comments.length - This always loads the contents of the
association into memory, then returns the number of elements loaded.
Note that this won't force an update if the association had been
previously loaded and then new comments were created through another
way (e.g. Comment.create(...) instead of post.comments.create(...)).
post.comments.size - This works as a combination of the two previous
options. If the collection has already been loaded, it will return its
length just like calling #length. If it hasn't been loaded yet, it's
like calling #count.
Also I have a personal experience:
<%= h(params.size.to_s) %> # works_like_that !
<%= h(params.count.to_s) %> # does_not_work_like_that !
We have a several ways to find out how many elements in an array like .length, .count and .size. However, It's better to use array.size rather than array.count. Because .size is better in performance.
Adding more to Mark Byers answer. In Ruby the method array.size is an alias to Array#length method. There is no technical difference in using any of these two methods. Possibly you won't see any difference in performance as well. However, the array.count also does the same job but with some extra functionalities Array#count
It can be used to get total no of elements based on some condition. Count can be called in three ways:
Array#count # Returns number of elements in Array
Array#count n # Returns number of elements having value n in Array
Array#count{|i| i.even?} Returns count based on condition invoked on each element array
array = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,4,3,2,4,5,6,7,1,2,4]
array.size # => 17
array.length # => 17
array.count # => 17
Here all three methods do the same job. However here is where the count gets interesting.
Let us say, I want to find how many array elements does the array contains with value 2
array.count 2 # => 3
The array has a total of three elements with value as 2.
Now, I want to find all the array elements greater than 4
array.count{|i| i > 4} # =>6
The array has total 6 elements which are > than 4.
I hope it gives some info about count method.