I cannot think of a case where using the Kotlin built-in plus, minus, times etc. functions would return a different result from just using the corresponding operators (+, -, *). Why would you ever want to use these functions in your Kotlin code?
Just in case you aren't aware, these are operator overloads. The named functions are how the operators' functionality is defined.
There is a case for using the named versions. The function calls don't pay attention to operator precedence and are evaluated sequentially if you chain them.
val x = 1
val y = 2
val z = 3
println(x + y * z) // equivalent to 1 + (2 * 3) -> 7
println(x.plus(y).times(z)) // equivalent to (1 + 2) * 3 -> 9
This could be clearer than using the operators if you have a lot of nested parentheses, depending on the context of the type of math you're doing.
result = ((x - 7) * y - z) * 10
// vs
result = x.minus(7).times(y).minus(z).times(10)
It's not really applicable for basic algebra like this, but you might have classes with operator overloads where the logic can be more easily reasoned through with the sequential approach.
By explicitly stating function names you can perform a safe call on a nullable number which cannot be done with an operator.
For example:
fun doubleOrZero(num: Int?) : Int {
return num?.times(2) ?: 0
}
Related
I'm trying to set a certain value, monsterHealth, to display 0 instead of a negative number. If I'm trying to reassign the value to show 0 instead of, say, -2, would I want to use = or ==?
Those are different operators:
= - assignment operator,
== and != - equality operators,
=== and !== - referential equality operators.
also
val - read only variable/property (it cannot be reassigned/changed),
var - mutable variable/property.
Kotlin Documentation - Keywords and operators
I'm learning OCaml, and the docs and books I'm reading aren't very clear on some things.
In simple words, what are the differences between
-10
and
~-10
To me they seem the same. I've encountered other resources trying to explain the differences, but they seem to explain in terms that I'm not yet familiar with, as the only thing I know so far are variables.
In fact, - is a binary operator, so some expression can be ambigous : f 10 -20 is treated as (f 10) - 20. For example, let's imagine this dummy function:
let f x y = (x, y)
If I want produce the tuple (10, -20) I naïvely would write something like that f 10 -20 which leads me to the following error:
# f 10 -20;;
Error: This expression has type 'a -> int * 'a
but an expression was expected of type int
because the expression is evaluated as (f 10) - 20 (so a substract over a function!!) so you can write the expression like this: f 10 (-20), which is valid or f 10 ~-20 since ~- (and ~+ and ~-. ~+. for floats) are unary operators, the predecense is properly respected.
It is easier to start by looking at how user-defined unary (~-) operators work.
type quaternion = { r:float; i:float; j:float; k:float }
let zero = { r = 0.; i = 0.; j = 0.; k = 0. }
let i = { zero with i = 1. }
let (~-) q = { r = -.q.r; i = -.q.i; j = -. q.j; k = -. q.k }
In this situation, the unary operator - (and +) is a shorthand for ~- (and ~+) when the parsing is unambiguous. For example, defining -i with
let mi = -i
works because this - could not be the binary operator -.
Nevertheless, the binary operator has a higher priority than the unary - thus
let wrong = Fun.id -i
is read as
let wrong = (Fun.id) - (i)
In this context, I can either use the full form ~-
let ok' = Fun.id ~-i
or add some parenthesis
let ok'' = Fun.id (-i)
Going back to type with literals (e.g integers, or floats), for those types, the unary + and - symbol can be part of the literal itself (e.g -10) and not an operator. For instance redefining ~- and ~+ does not change the meaning of the integer literals in
let (~+) = ()
let (~-) = ()
let really = -10
let positively_real = +10
This can be "used" to create some quite obfuscated expression:
let (~+) r = { zero with r }
let (+) x y = { r = x.r +. y.r; i = x.i +. y.i; k = x.k +. x.k; j =x.k +. y.j }
let ( *. ) s q = { r = s *. q.r; i = s *. q.i; j = s *. q.j; k = s *. q.k }
let this_is_valid x = +x + +10. *. i
OCaml has two kinds of operators - prefix and infix. The prefix operators precede expressions and infix occur in between the two expressions, e.g., in !foo we have the prefix operator ! coming before the expression foo and in 2 + 3 we have the infix operator + between expressions 2 and 3.
Operators are like normal functions except that they have a different syntax for application (aka calling), whilst functions are applied to an arbitrary number of arguments using a simple syntax of juxtaposition, e.g., f x1 x2 x3 x41, operators can have only one (prefix) or two (infix) arguments. Prefix operators are very close to normal functions, cf., f x and !x, but they have higher precedence (bind tighter) than normal function application. Contrary, the infix operators, since they are put between two expressions, enable a more natural syntax, e.g., x + y vs. (+) x y, but have lower precedence (bind less tight) than normal function application. Moreover, they enable chaining several operators in a row, e.g., x + y + z is interpreted as (x + y) + z, which is much more readable than add (add (x y) z).
Operators in OCaml distinguished purely syntactically. It means that the kind of an operator is fully defined by the first character of that operator, not by a special compiler directive, like in some other languages (i.e., there is not infix + directive in OCaml). If an operator starts with the prefix-symbol sequence, e.g., !, ?#, ~%, it is considered as prefix and if it starts with an infix-symbol then it is, correspondingly, an infix operator.
The - and -. operators are treated specially and can appear both as prefix and infix. E.g., in 1 - -2 we have - occurring both in the infix and prefix positions. However, it is only possible to disambiguate between the infix and the prefix versions of the - (and -.) operators when they occur together with other operators (infix or prefix), but when we have a general expression, the - operator is treated as infix. E.g., max 0 -1 is interpreted as (max 0) - 1 (remember that operator has lower precedence than function application, therefore when they two appear with no parentheses then functions are applied first and operators after that). Another example, Some -1, which is interpreted as Some - 1, not as Some (-1). To disambiguate such code, you can use either the parentheses, e.g., max 0 (-1), or the prefix-only versions, e.g, Some ~-1 or max 0 ~-1.
As a matter of personal style, I actually prefer parentheses as it is usually hard to keep these rules in mind when you read the code.
1) Purists will say that functions in OCaml can have only one argument and f x1 x2 x3 x4 is just ((f x1) x2) x3) x4, which would be a totally correct statement, but a little bit irrelevant to the current discussion.
I have recently sat a computing exam in university in which we were never taught beforehand about the modulus function or any other check for odd/even function and we have no access to external documentation except our previous lecture notes. Is it possible to do this without these and how?
Bitwise AND (&)
Extract the last bit of the number using the bitwise AND operator. If the last bit is 1, then it's odd, else it's even. This is the simplest and most efficient way of testing it. Examples in some languages:
C / C++ / C#
bool is_even(int value) {
return (value & 1) == 0;
}
Java
public static boolean is_even(int value) {
return (value & 1) == 0;
}
Python
def is_even(value):
return (value & 1) == 0
I assume this is only for integer numbers as the concept of odd/even eludes me for floating point values.
For these integer numbers, the check of the Least Significant Bit (LSB) as proposed by Rotem is the most straightforward method, but there are many other ways to accomplish that.
For example, you could use the integer division operation as a test. This is one of the most basic operation which is implemented in virtually every platform. The result of an integer division is always another integer. For example:
>> x = int64( 13 ) ;
>> x / 2
ans =
7
Here I cast the value 13 as a int64 to make sure MATLAB treats the number as an integer instead of double data type.
Also here the result is actually rounded towards infinity to the next integral value. This is MATLAB specific implementation, other platform might round down but it does not matter for us as the only behavior we look for is the rounding, whichever way it goes. The rounding allow us to define the following behavior:
If a number is even: Dividing it by 2 will produce an exact result, such that if we multiply this result by 2, we obtain the original number.
If a number is odd: Dividing it by 2 will result in a rounded result, such that multiplying it by 2 will yield a different number than the original input.
Now you have the logic worked out, the code is pretty straightforward:
%% sample input
x = int64(42) ;
y = int64(43) ;
%% define the checking function
% uses only multiplication and division operator, no high level function
is_even = #(x) int64(x) == (int64(x)/2)*2 ;
And obvisouly, this will yield:
>> is_even(x)
ans =
1
>> is_even(y)
ans =
0
I found out from a fellow student how to solve this simplistically with maths instead of functions.
Using (-1)^n :
If n is odd then the outcome is -1
If n is even then the outcome is 1
This is some pretty out-of-the-box thinking, but it would be the only way to solve this without previous knowledge of complex functions including mod.
The following method determines how many numbers can be added up starting from the beginning of the list without adding up to 4:
number_before_Reaching_sum (4, [1,2,3,4,6]);
should return : val it = 2 : int
fun number_before_reaching_sum (sum : int * int list) =
let val len_orig_list = length (#2 sum)
in fun num_bef_reach_sum (sum) =
if #1 sum <= 0
then len_orig_list - (length (#2 sum)) - 1
else num_bef_reach_sum (#1 sum - hd (#2 sum), tl (#2 sum))
end
syntax error: inserting LOCAL
syntax error found at EOF
I can't seem to find the errors in this code. I have some experience with Python, but just starting to learn sml. I'm loving it, but I don't understand all the error messages. I have really spent hours on this, but I think I don't know enough to solve my problem. I tried exchanging let with local, but i still got a syntax error (equalop). I think that the function between in and end is an expression and not a declaration. But I would appreciate any comments on this. If you come up with alternative code, it would be great if you did it without using more advanced features, since I'm just trying to get the basics down :-)
You probably meant this:
fun number_before_reaching_sum (sum : int * int list) =
let
val len_orig_list = length (#2 sum)
fun num_bef_reach_sum (sum) =
if #1 sum <= 0
then len_orig_list - (length (#2 sum)) - 1
else num_bef_reach_sum (#1 sum - hd (#2 sum), tl (#2 sum))
in
num_bef_reach_sum (sum)
end
With let … in … end, the part between let and in is for the local definitions; the part between in and end is for the expression which will be the evaluation of the let … in … end expression (this construct is indeed an expression).
Think of let … in … end as a possibly complex expression. You hoist parts of the expression as definitions, then rewrite the complex expression using references to these definitions. This help write shorter expressions by folding some of its sub‑expressions. This construct is also required when recursion is needed (a recursion requires a defining name).
Another way to understand it, is as the application of an anonymous function whose arguments bindings are these definitions.
Ex.
let
val x = 1
val y = 2
in
x + y
end
is the same as writing
(fn (x, y) => x + y) (1, 2)
which is the same as writing
1 + 2
You erroneously put a definition at the place of the expression the whole evaluates to.
(note I did not check the function's logic, as the question was about syntax)
Im working on a small calculation app and I'm using a formula I created in PHP and now trying to translate to Objective-C however, the power operator is not clear to me.
Im looking at the following code:
float value = ((((x)*i)/12)/(1-(1+i/12)^-((x*12))))-i;
The power operator is non existent in Objective-C.
How should I apply the power operator in Objective-C and could some assist me by telling me where it should be?
(Too many parentheses! You don't need parentheses around x or (x*12), for instance.)
There is no power operator. The standard function powf() will do the job, however (pow() if you wanted a double result):
float value = x * i / 12 / (1 - powf(1 + i / 12, -12 * x)) - i;
^ is the bitwise XOR operator both in C (and so in Objective-C as well) and in PHP.
To perform a power operator use the C pow (which returns a double) or powf (which returns a float) functions
float result = powf(5, 2); // => 25
Your expression will then become (stripping away all the redundant parenthesis and leaving some for readability) :
float value = (x*i/12) / (1 - powf(1 + i/12, -x*12)) - i;