I need to condense the following lines in kotlin to a more elegant way. I'm not able to figure out how to check the optional and the values at the same time. Basically I need to verify the list 'a' exists, has one or more items and that they are not 0.
val a = Utils.getItems() // returns an Optional<ImmutableList<ItemChange>>
if(!a.orElse(ImmutableList.of()).size > 0) {
val nonZero = a.get().filter { it.item != BigDecimal.ZERO }
return nonZero.size > 0
}
Assuming you also want to return false if non-existent or size 0, this is how I'd do it.
The any function returns true if any value matches, so it already takes care of the case of an empty list. And it breaks immediately if any match is found, whereas filter will exhaustively check the whole List and allocate a new List to hold the results.
Guava Optional can simply be converted to nullable with orNull() because Kotlin already has null-safety built in.
val items = Utils.getItems().orNull()
return items != null && items.any { it.item != BigDecimal.ZERO }
Related
I am currently trying to make a comparable object and working on the compareTo() function, for which I wrote the following code
class InfoAcad(e: String, m: String, c: Int): Comparable<InfoAcad> {
override operator fun compareTo(other: InfoAcad): Int {
if (this.e < other.e) return -1
if (this.e > other.e) return 1
if (this.e == other.e && this.m < other.m) return -1
if (this.e == other.e && this.m > other.m) return 1
return 0
}
}
The idea is that e is an ID number inputted as a string, which always follows the format XX-XXX where every X character is an integer between 0 and 9, and m is a course code following the format LL-XXX where each L character is a capital letter between A and Z and the X characters are integers between 0 and 9 like in the ID numbers. The objects are first compared by their ID number, and if the ID numbers are equal they are then compared by the course code, if both values are the same then the objects are equal, the c parameter is not taken into account in the comparison. I found out yesterday that I could compare strings directly in Kotlin in < and > relations, so I decided to try using that to make the task of comparing the InfoAcad objects a bit easier on myself, however when I make a main function to test the comparisons, the equality always returns a false value independently of what is in the string values of the InfoAcad objects. Here's said main function:
fun main() {
var A = InfoAcad("18-10125", "CI-2526", 3)
var B = InfoAcad("18-10125", "CI-2526", 5)
println("A = B: " + (A == B).toString()) //true
println("A < B: " + (A < B).toString()) //false
ptintln("A > B: " + (A > B).toString()) //false
}
When I change characters in the ID and course code values the inequality relations work just as intended, so what could be causing the equality relation to always return false? I appreciate and thank any responses in advance.
Note: I have also tried giving A and B the same c value, the equality part still returned false.
Override the equals function as well, or use a data class.
compareTo is only used for the < and > operators. The == operator is implemented by the separate equals function.
You can find the available operators, and the functions you need to override for each, in the Operator overloading section of the Kotlin docs.
If you don't override the equals function, the default behaviour is for it to use object identity. That means that two different objects, even if they contain the same fields, will never be considered equal.
There is however a nice shortcut for what you want to do! Kotlin will automatically generate an equals function for you if you make your class a data class. It's a good fit for classes like yours, whose main purpose is to hold data.
Because == and != translates to a call to equals(other: Any?): Boolean method, from kotlinlang
Expression Translated to
a == b a?.equals(b) ?: (b === null)
a != b !(a?.equals(b) ?: (b === null))
These operators only work with the function equals(other: Any?): Boolean, which can be overridden to provide custom equality check
implementation. Any other function with the same name (like
equals(other: Foo)) will not be called.
The following functions produces error. How to use let() or similar null check functions inside a if/for statement.
Here is my code:
fun main() {
var List = listOf<Int>(201, 53 ,5 ,556 ,70 , 9999)
var budget: Int = 500
if(List.min() < 500) { // this line produces the error
println("Yes you can buy from this shop")
}
}
And here is the error:
Operator call corresponds to a dot-qualified call 'List.min().compareTo(500)' which is not allowed on a nullable receiver 'List.min()'.
Help me with nullable types. Thank you
The question here is: what do you want to happen if your list is empty?
If a list has one or more items, and those items are comparable, then you can always find a minimum. (It doesn't have to be unique.) But if the list has no items, then there is no minimum. So what do you want to happen then? Do you want to continue with a ‘default’ value? Or skip that block? Or something else?
If you want a default value, then you can use the elvis operator:
if ((list.minOrNull() ?: 0) < 500)
println("Yes you can buy from this shop")
That substitutes the value 0 if the list is empty. (It doesn't have to be zero; any value will do. In fact, this can work with any type as long as it's Comparable.)
Or you could do an explicit check for the list being empty:
if (list.isEmpty()) {
// Do something else
} else if (list.minOrNull()!! < 500)
println("Yes you can buy from this shop")
The !! non-null assertion operator works here, but it's a code smell. (It's easy to miss when you're changing surrounding code; it could then throw a NullPointerException.) So it's safer to handle the null. Perhaps the most idiomatic way is with let():
list.minOrNull().let {
if (it == null) {
// Do something else
} else if (it < 500)
println("Yes you can buy from this shop")
}
(The < check is allowed there, because by that point the compiler knows it can't be null.)
Or if you just want to avoid the check entirely, use a ?. safe-call so that let() is only called on a non-null value:
list.minOrNull()?.let {
if (it < 500)
println("Yes you can buy from this shop")
}
I am currently learning kotlin and therefore following the kotlin track on exercism. The following exercise required me to calculate the Hamming difference between two Strings (so basically just counting the number of differences).
I got to the solution with the following code:
object Hamming {
fun compute(dnaOne: String, dnaTwo: String): Int {
if (dnaOne.length != dnaTwo.length) throw IllegalArgumentException("left and right strands must be of equal length.")
var counter = 0
for ((index, letter) in dnaOne.toCharArray().withIndex()) {
if (letter != dnaTwo.toCharArray()[index]) {
counter++
}
}
return counter
}
}
however, in the beginning I tried to do dnaOne.split("").withIndex() instead of dnaOne.toCharArray().withIndex() which did not work, it would literally stop after the first iteration and the following example
Hamming.compute("GGACGGATTCTG", "AGGACGGATTCT") would return 1 instead of the correct integer 9 (which only gets returned when using toCharArray)
I would appreciate any explanation
I was able to simplify this by using the built-in CharSequence.zip function because StringimplementsCharSequence` in Kotlin.
According to the documentation for zip:
Returns a list of pairs built from the characters of this and the [other] char sequences with the same index
The returned list has length of the shortest char sequence.
Which means we will get a List<Pair<Char,Char>> back (a list of pairs of letters in the same positions). Now that we have this, we can use Iterable.count to determine how many of them are different.
I implemented this as an extension function on String rather than in an object:
fun String.hamming(other: String): Int =
if(this.length != other.length) {
throw IllegalArgumentException("String lengths must match")
} else {
this.zip(other).count { it.first != it.second }
}
This also becomes a single expression now.
And to call this:
val ham = "GGACGGATTCTG".hamming("AGGACGGATTCT")
println("Hamming distance: $ham")
In the sample below, the function should return a non-null data.
Since the data could be changed in the process, it needs to be var, and can only be nullable to start with.
I can't use lateinit because the first call of if (d == null) will throw.
After the process it will be assigned a non-null data, but the return has to use the !! (double bang or non-null assertion operator).
What is the best approach to avoid the !!?
fun testGetLowest (dataArray: List<Data>) : Data {
var d: Data? = null
for (i in dataArray.indecs) {
if (d == null) {// first run
d = dataArray[i]
} else if {
d.level < dataArray[i].level
d = dataArray[i]
}
}
return d!!
}
If you don't like !! then supply a default value for it. You'll realize you can only supply the default value if the list is not empty, but, as you said, the list is already known to be non-empty. The good part of this story is that the type system doesn't track list size so when you say dataArray[0], it will take your word for it.
fun testGetLowest(dataArray: List<Data>) : Data {
var d: Data = dataArray[0]
for (i in 1 until dataArray.size) {
if (d.level < dataArray[i].level) {
d = dataArray[i]
}
}
return d
}
Normally, you can and should lean on the compiler to infer nullability. This is not always possible, and in the contrived example if the inner loop runs but once d is non-null. This is guaranteed to happen if dataArray has at least one member.
Using this knowledge you could refactor the code slightly using require to check the arguments (for at least one member of the array) and checkNotNull to assert the state of the dataArray as a post-condition.
fun testGetLowest (dataArray: List<Data>) : Data {
require(dataArray.size > 0, { "Expected dataArray to have size of at least 1: $dataArray")
var d: Data? = null
for (i in dataArray.indecs) {
if (d == null) {// first run
d = dataArray[i]
} else if {
d.level < dataArray[i].level
d = dataArray[i]
}
}
return checkNotNull(d, { "Expected d to be non-null through dataArray having at least one element and d being assigned in first iteration of loop" })
}
Remember you can return the result of a checkNotNull (and similar operators):
val checkedD = checkNotNull(d)
See Google Guava's Preconditions for something similar.
Even if you were to convert it to an Option, you would still have to deal with the case when dataArray is empty and so the value returned is undefined.
If you wanted to make this a complete function instead of throwing an exception, you can return an Option<Data> instead of a Data so that the case of an empty dataArray would return a None and leave it up to the caller to deal with how to handle the sad path.
How to do the same check, and cover the empty case
fun testGetLowest(dataArray: List<Data>)
= dataArray.minBy { it.level } ?: throw AssertionError("List was empty")
This uses the ?: operator to either get the minimum, or if the minimum is null (the list is empty) throws an error instead.
The accepted answer is completly fine but just to mentioned another way to solve your problem by changing one line in your code: return d ?: dataArray[0]
If I create an array, then fill it, Kotlin believes that there may be nulls in the array, and forces me to account for this
val strings = arrayOfNulls<String>(10000)
strings.fill("hello")
val upper = strings.map { it!!.toUpperCase() } // requires it!!
val lower = upper.map { it.toLowerCase() } // doesn't require !!
Creating a filled array doesn't have this problem
val strings = Array(10000, {"string"})
val upper = strings.map { it.toUpperCase() } // doesn't require !!
How can I tell the compiler that the result of strings.fill("hello") is an array of NonNull?
A rule of thumb: if in doubts, specify the types explicitly (there is a special refactoring for that):
val strings1: Array<String?> = arrayOfNulls<String>(10000)
val strings2: Array<String> = Array(10000, {"string"})
So you see that strings1 contains nullable items, while strings2 does not. That and only that determines how to work with these arrays:
// You can simply use nullability in you code:
strings2[0] = strings1[0]?.toUpperCase ?: "KOTLIN"
//Or you can ALWAYS cast the type, if you are confident:
val casted = strings1 as Array<String>
//But to be sure I'd transform the items of the array:
val asserted = strings1.map{it!!}
val defaults = strings1.map{it ?: "DEFAULT"}
Why the filled array works fine
The filled array infers the type of the array during the call from the lambda used as the second argument:
val strings = Array(10000, {"string"})
produces Array<String>
val strings = Array(10000, { it -> if (it % 2 == 0) "string" else null })
produces Array<String?>
Therefore changing the declaration to the left of the = that doesn't match the lambda does not do anything to help. If there is a conflict, there is an error.
How to make the arrayOfNulls work
For the arrayOfNulls problem, they type you specify to the call arrayOfNulls<String> is used in the function signature as generic type T and the function arrayOfNulls returns Array<T?> which means nullable. Nothing in your code changes that type. The fill method only sets values into the existing array.
To convert this nullable-element array to non-nullable-element list, use:
val nullableStrings = arrayOfNulls<String>(10000).apply { fill("hello") }
val strings = nullableStrings.filterNotNull()
val upper = strings.map { it.toUpperCase() } // no !! needed
Which is fine because your map call converts to a list anyway, so why not convert beforehand. Now depending on the size of the array this could be performant or not, the copy might be fast if in CPU cache. If it is large and no performant, you can make this lazy:
val nullableStrings = arrayOfNulls<String>(10000).apply { fill("hello") }
val strings = nullableStrings.asSequence().filterNotNull()
val upper = strings.map { it.toUpperCase() } // no !! needed
Or you can stay with arrays by doing a copy, but really this makes no sense because you undo it with the map:
val nullableStrings = arrayOfNulls<String>(10000).apply { fill("hello") }
val strings: Array<String> = Array(nullableStrings.size, { idx -> nullableStrings[idx]!! })
Arrays really are not that common in Java or Kotlin code (JetBrains studied the statistics) unless the code is doing really low level optimization. It could be better to use lists.
Given that you might end up with lists anyway, maybe start there too and give up the array.
val nullableStrings = listOf("a","b",null,"c",null,"d")
val strings = nullableStrings.filterNotNull()
But, if you can't stop the quest to use arrays, and really must cast one without a copy...
You can always write a function that does two things: First, check that all values are not null, and if so then return the array that is cast as not null. This is a bit hacky, but is safe only because the difference is nullability.
First, create an extension function on Array<T?>:
fun <T: Any> Array<T?>.asNotNull(): Array<T> {
if (this.any { it == null }) {
throw IllegalStateException("Cannot cast an array that contains null")
}
#Suppress("CAST_NEVER_SUCCEEDS")
return this as Array<T>
}
Then use this function new function to do the conversion (element checked as not null cast):
val nullableStrings = arrayOfNulls<String>(10000).apply { fill("hello") }
val strings = nullableStrings.asNotNull() // magic!
val upperStrings = strings.map { it.toUpperCase() } // no error
But I feel dirty even talking about this last option.
There is no way to tell this to the compiler. The type of the variable is determined when it is declared. In this case, the variable is declared as an array that can contain nulls.
The fill() method does not declare a new variable, it only modifies the contents of an existing one, so it cannot cause the variable type to change.