I'm new to Kotlin and I'm trying to do a simple task - create and write to a file. For some reason, using use() with a block function on printWriter() doesn't actually write.
File("test2.txt").printWriter().use { out ->
{
println("hmmm")
out.println("what's up")
log.info { "finished writing" }
}
}
In fact, the block function doesn't seem to be called at all - both "hmmm" and "finished writing" never show up, although the file itself is created (but is totally empty).
The much simpler writeText() works just fine - the file is created and the given text is written to the file.
File("test3.txt").writeText("testing")
What am I doing wrong in my use() version?
Edit: it seems to be a syntax issue with my block function. Looks like I have an extra pair of brackets? Would love a brief explanation as to why it makes it not work.
Edit 2: I think I understand now. The way I wrote it, I was essentially returning the block function itself rather than running through it.
So the problem was that the way I was writing the block function caused it to just return the inner block function, and not actually call it.
Here are two ways that work:
File("test2.txt").printWriter().use {
println("hmmm")
it.println("what's up")
log.info { "finished writing!" }
}
File("test2.txt").printWriter().use(fun(out) {
println("hmmm")
out.println("what's up")
log.info { "finished writing!" }
})
Although, for my purposes writeText() actually works just fine and is much shorter haha.
Related
I want to run cleanup code after a certain block of code completes, regardless of exceptions. This is not a closeable resource and I cannot use try-with-resources (or Kotlin's use).
In Java, I could do the following:
try {
// ... Run some code
} catch(Exception ex) {
// ... Handle exception
} finally {
// ... Cleanup code
}
Is the following Kotlin code equivalent?
runCatching {
// ... Run some code
}.also {
// ... Cleanup code
}.onFailure {
// ... Handle exception
}
Edit: added boilerplate exception handling - my concern is with ensuring the cleanup code runs, and maintainability.
There is one important difference, where the code inside runCatching contains an early return. A finally block will be executed even after a return, whereas also has no such magic.
This code, when run, will print nothing:
fun test1()
runCatching {
return
}.also {
println("test1")
}
}
This code, when run, will print "test2":
fun test2() {
try {
return
} finally {
println("test2")
}
}
There is one big difference between both code samples. try...finally propagates exceptions while runCatching().also() catches/consumes them. To make it similar you would have to throw the result at the end:
runCatching {
// ... Run some code
}.also {
// ... Cleanup code
}.getOrThrow()
But still, it is not really 1:1 equivalent. It catches all exceptions just to rethrow them. For this reason, it is probably less performant than simple try...finally.
Also, I think this is less clear for the reader. try...finally is a standard way of dealing with exceptions. By using runCatching() just to immediately rethrow, you actually confuse people reading this code later.
Your question sounded a little like you believed Kotlin does not have try...finally and you need to search for alternatives. If this is the case, then of course Kotlin has try...finally and I think you should use it instead of runCatching().
As per Kotlin's doc for runCatching:
Calls the specified function block and returns its encapsulated result if invocation was successful, catching any Throwable exception that was thrown from the block function execution and encapsulating it as a failure.
Even if finally always runs after a try block and also always runs after a runCatching, they do not serve the same purpose.
finally doesn't receive any argument and cannot operate on the values of the try block, while also receives the Result of the runCatching block.
TLDR; .runCatching{}.also{} is a more advanced try{}finally{}
There is also a difference in what is the result of evaluating the expression.
Consider the following code:
fun main() {
val foo = try {
throw Exception("try")
} catch(e: Exception) {
"catch"
} finally {
"finally"
}
val bar = runCatching{
throw Exception("runCatching")
}.also{
"also"
}.onFailure {
"onFailure"
}
println(foo)
println(bar)
}
The output will be:
catch
Failure(java.lang.Exception: runCatching)
https://pl.kotl.in/a0aByS5l1
EDIT:
An interesting article that points out some differences as well:
https://medium.com/#mattia23r/a-take-on-functional-error-handling-in-kotlin-515b67b4212b
Now let’s give a second look at the implementation of runCatching in the gist above. What does it do? It catches everything.
In this case, it goes even further: it catches all Throwables. For those not knowing, Throwable is everything that can go after a throw keyword; it has two descendants: Exceptions and Errors. We haven’t mentioned Errors so far; Errors usually represent something wrong that happened at a lower level than your business logic, something that can’t usually be recovered with a simple catch.
Issue
Attempting to identify which is the best practice for executing sequential methods. Either, nesting conditionals one after another, or nesting conditionals one inside another, within a main function. In addition, if you could supply "why" one method would be better than the other besides what's most acceptable, I'd sincerely appreciate it. Here are my examples:
Nesting one after another
int main()
{
// conditional 1
if (!method_one())
{
... do something
}
else
{
... prompt error for method 1!
}
// conditional 2
if (!method_two())
{
... do something
}
else
{
... prompt error for method 2!
}
// conditional 3
if (!method_three())
{
... do something
}
else
{
... prompt error for method 3!
}
return 0;
}
Nesting one inside another
int main()
{
// conditional 1
if (!method_one())
{
if (!method_two())
{
if (!method_three())
{
... next steps in sequence
}
else
{
... prompt error for method 3!
}
... prompt error for method 2!
}
... prompt error for method 1!
}
return 0;
}
Observations
I've seen both used, however, not sure which is better practice and/or more commonly acceptable.
The two options aren't actually entirely logically identical - in the "Nesting one after another", for example, method_two() will run even if method_one() fails; if method_two() has any side effects this may be undesirable. Furthermore, if both method_one() and method_two() are destined to fail, "Nesting one after another" will print two error prompts, whereas 'Nesting one inside another" will only error prompt on method_one().
You could close the difference by appending a goto End at the end of each else in "Nesting one after another", so it skips over the remaining checks, but the use of goto would probably get you slapped. Alternatively, you could return at the end of each else, perhaps with an error code, and let whoever is calling your main function deal with understanding what went wrong.
With that in mind, "Nesting one after another" is probably easier to read and understand, since there's less indentation/the code is kept flat, and what happens on failure is immediately next to the check. (That 2nd point can be addressed by reordering the error prompt for method_one() to before the check for method_two() for "Nesting one inside another")
I don't even have a clue why this is happening. The if condition in my job is not working properly. I triple checked the $flag variable and it is true. Still the code always goes to the else condition.
$flag = file_exists($csvFile);
if($flag){
//A big chunk of code
} else {
return 'Whatever you do I will always go here XD';
}
I hard coded true inside if, it works properly. Then another if inside that chunk of code also always goes to else. Again double checked Express. Express object exists and object is returned properly. And is_object returns true.
$flag = file_exists($csvFile);
if(true){
//Some code here
$entity = Express::getObjectByHandle('user');
if(is_object($entity)){
// Another chunk of code
} else {
return 'You cant escape from me that easily... XD';
}
//some code here
} else {
return "Now I'm a good boy";
}
Tried a bunch of things. The code works without any problems in single page controllers. What ever I do it's just not working. I'm running PHP 5.6.10 on MAMP. Conceret5 8.1.0
The only time I've seen something like this is with a buggy older version of PHP.
You could try moving some code around like so:
if($flag = file_exists($csvFile)) {
// code to handle file
} else {
// no file
}
A followup post would help...
Well. Looks like I found the fix. It looks like a simple matter but don't know for sure. I was running the job from dashboard, I didn't knew I could run the same job from the url as well (Automate job option URL). It worked fine when I ran it from URL and Magically it started working inside the Dashboard as well. I will look into it in detail when I get the time.
how would it be possible to bypass functions that are not existing in DM
such that the main code would still run? Try/catch does not seem to work, e..g
image doSomething(number a,number b)
{
try
{
whateverfunction(a,b)
}
catch
{
continue
}
}
number a,b
doSomething(a,b)
Also conditioning wont work, e.g..
image doSomething(number a,number b)
{
if(doesfunctionexist("whateverfunction"))
{
whateverfunction(a,b)
}
}
number a,b
doSomething(a,b)
thanks in advance!
As "unknown" commands are caught by the script-interpreter, there is no easy way to do this. However, you can construct a workaround by using ExecuteScriptCommand().
There is an example tutorial to be found in this e-book, but in short, you want to do something like the following:
String scriptCallStr = "beep();\n"
scriptCallStr = "MyUnsaveFunctionCall();\n"
number exitVal
Try { exitVal = ExecuteScriptString(scriptCallStr ); }
Catch { exitVal = -1; break; }
if ( -1 == exitVal )
{
OKDialog("Sorry, couldn't do:\n" + scriptCallStr )
}
else
{
OKDialog( "All worked. Exit value: " + exitVal )
}
This works nicely and easy for simple commands and if your task is only to "verify" that a script could run.
It becomes clumsy, when you need to pass around parameters. But even then there are ways to do so. (The 'outer' script could create an object and pass the object-ID per string. Similarly, the 'inner' script can do the same and return the script-object ID as exit-value.)
Note: You can of course also put doesfunctionexist inside the test-script, if you do only want to have a "safe test", but don't actually want to execute the command.
Depending on what you need there might also be another workaround solution: Wrapper-functions in a library. This can be useful if you want to run the same script on different PCs with some of which having the functionality - most likely some microscope - while others don't.
You can make your main-script use wrapper methods and then you install different versions of the wrapper method script scripts as libraries.
void My_SpecialFunction( )
{
SpecialFunction() // use this line on PCs which have the SpecialFunction()
DoNothing() // use alternative line on PCs which don't have the SpecialFunction()
}
My_SpecialFunction( )
I have used this in the past where the same functionality (-stage movement-) required different commands on different machines.
I am in the process of writing a bash clone in Rust. I need to have my program exit when the user types exit. In previous iterations of my program, before I added more complicated features, I used return to get out of the loop that was prompting the user for input. This logic is now in a function, because of the way I am implementing built in shell functions, so when I return it just jumps out of the function back into the control loop, instead of short-circuiting the control loop and ending the program.
I realize that I could probably return a boolean when the user types exit and exit the loop, but I would like to at least know if Rust has a way to terminate programs early, similar to Java's System.exit(), as this is useful for certain types of programs.
Rust 1.0 stable
std::process::exit() does exactly that - it terminates the program with the specified exit code:
use std::process;
fn main() {
for i in 0..10 {
if i == 5 {
process::exit(1);
}
println!("{}", i);
}
}
This function causes the program to terminate immediately, without unwinding and running destructors, so it should be used sparingly.
Alternative (not recommended) solution
You can use C API directly. Add libc = "0.2" to Cargo.toml, and:
fn main() {
for i in 0..10 {
if i == 5 {
unsafe { libc::exit(1); }
}
println!("{}", i);
}
}
Calling C functions cannot be verified by the Rust compiler, so this requires the unsafe block. Resources used by the program will not be freed properly. This may cause problems such as hanging sockets.
As far as I understand, the proper way to exit from the program is to terminate all threads somehow, then the process will exit automatically.
panic!("Oh no something bad has happened!")
Example:
if a * g < 0f32 { panic!("The arithmetric-geometric mean is undefined for numbers less than zero!"); }
In older documentation, you will see this as fail!("Oh no something bad here has happened.")
For some reason, this macro was changed from fail to panic. Panic is the way to fail, if you must.
[edit] I am sorry. It looks like you should be testing input for the string "exit," which would depend on how you are taking input (by line or by args). Then you can have the program break out of the loop on the condition that the exit is detected.
Example:
loop {
if exit_found { break }
else {
// your thing, which also looks for exit_found
}
}