I'm currently investigating the use of FxCop with one of our existing projects and am getting an odd result.
The output displays a small number of breaches of the 'Override methods on comparable types' rule stating "'Log' should override Equals since it implements IComparable."
There are two issues with this:
I thought that it was only necessary to implement CompareTo when implementing IComparable (MSDN itself confirms this)
The class is not implementing IComparable but IComparable<T> and does impliment CompareTo as strongly typed.
So it FxCop (1.36) throwing a wobbly or is it my understanding thats out of whack here..?
Thanks in advance.
FxCop is a quite paranoidal tool... In this case, I suppose, it is trying to warn you, that you are changing the logic of comparison somehow and you shouldn't forget changing the equality logic if needed. You see, CompareTo method sometimes returns 0, which should be consistent with using Equals.
If this is not really your case, and you are sure you don't need any of the overloading (an example in MSDN shows that you will need to override all other equalty operators as well)... then just supress the warning or disable it.
I would override Equals,
just call base.Equals in your method
and add a comment explaining why the above is all that is needed
That way FxCop is happy, and so is the next programmer that looks at your code. (In a very few cases you can't do the above due to proforance problems, but these are rare these days.
Related
I have been looking in Rakudo source for the implementation of require, first out of curiosity and second because I wanted to know if it was returning something.
I looked up sub require and it returned this hit, which actually seems to be the source for require, but it's called sub REQUIRE_IMPORT. It returns Nil and is declared as such, which pretty much answers my original question. But now my question is: Where's the mapping from that sub to require? Is it really the implementation for that function? Are there some other functions that are declared that way?
require is not a sub, but rather a statement control (so, in the same category of things like use, if, for, etc.) It is parsed by the Perl 6 grammar and there are a few different cases that are accepted. It is compiled in the Perl 6 actions, which has quite a bit to handle.
Much of the work is delegated to the various CompUnit objects, which are also involved with use/need. It also has to take care of stubbing symbols that the require will bring in, since the set of symbols in a given lexical scope is fixed at compile time, and the REQUIRE_IMPORT utility sub is involved with the runtime symbol import too.
The answer to your question as to what it will evaluate to comes at the end of the method:
$past.push($<module_name>
?? self.make_indirect_lookup($longname.components())
!! $<file>.ast);
Which means:
If it was a require Some::Module then evaluate to a lookup of Some::Module
If it was a require $file style case, evaluate to the filename
Like in this example:
sealed class Option<T>
object None : Option<Nothing>() // <-- like this
class Some<T> : Option<T>()
Or, if it's not a good practice, what should I use here instead?
Are there any official response/article on that? Or is there any argumentation that this is a good practice?
I know that Nothing was designed to be used as a type for return value for functions that never returns any value, so I'm not sure if using it as a generic parameter is a valid use.
I know there is an article that says that you can do that, but I'm not sure if I can trust it.
And the author of koptional uses it too, but I don't know if I can trust that either.
Also, it looks like in Scala Option is implemented similar to that, None have type Option[Nothing] and Scala's Nothing is similar to Kotlin's Nothing.
I agree with #zsmb13's comment. Using Nothing in a generic type hierarchy is perfectly valid and even gives benefits over other options:
First, Nothing is embedded in the Kotlin type system as a subtype of any other type, so it plays well with generics variance. For example, Option<Nothing> can be passed where Option<out Foo> is expected.
Second, the compiler will perform control flow checks and detect unreachable code after a Nothing-returning member call when the type is statically known.
See also: A Whirlwind Tour of the Kotlin Type Hierarchy
Being a newbie Kotlin coder, I wonder, if there are some good practices or even language constructs for declaring pre-conditions in functions.
In Java I have been using Guava's Preconditions checking utilities:
https://github.com/google/guava/wiki/PreconditionsExplained
After some further investigation I came across the require function:
https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin/require.html
Is this what is generally used for checking preconditions on functions?
Of course. You can find all of the preconditions in Preconditions.kt. In addition to the require function, there are requireNotNull, check & checkNotNull functions.
Since the documentation describes it poorly in Kotlin, but you can see the Objects#requireNonNull documentation in jdk as further.
Checks that the specified object reference is not null. This method is designed primarily for doing parameter validation in methods and constructors.
I use assert() and require() from the stdlib.
https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin/assert.html
https://kotlinlang.org/api/latest/jvm/stdlib/kotlin/require.html
Actually, 'require' appears to not be inherited - that is, if a subclass overrides a function that has a 'require' statement, the 'require' in the parent function is not enforced. A true precondition would also apply in the case of a redefinition of the inherited function, so (IMO) 'require' does not truly provide full precondition-checking functionality.
(I say "appears" because, being new to kotlin, I've learned this by a simple experiment using inheritance - and it's possible I'm wrong - e.g., there's a bug in the compiler causing incorrect behavior, or I've done something wrong in compiling/setup. I don't think this possibility is likely, though.)
Yes, it seems that toolforger is right about 'require'. I just searched for "require" as a keyword at https://kotlinlang.org and couldn't find it, nor as a documented function. It appears to be undocumented (unless the doc for require is hidden somewhere I couldn't find); and, of course, that means we cannot count on it to implement the standard DBC "require" behavior, and so the logical assumption is that it is simply the equivalent to "assert" in C.
I'm aware this might be a broad question (there's no specific code for you to look at), but I'm hoping I'd get some insights as to what to do, or how to approach the problem.
To keep things simple, suppose the compiler that I'm writing performs these three steps:
parse (and bind all variables)
typecheck
codegen
Also the language that I'm building the compiler for wants to support late-analysis/late-binding (ie., it has a function that takes a String, which is to be compiled and executed as a piece of source-code during runtime).
Now during parse-phase, I have a piece of context that I need to keep around till run-time for the sole benefit of the aforementioned function (because it needs to parse and typecheck its argument in that context).
So the question, how should I do this? What do other compilers do?
Should I just serialise the context object to disk (codegen for it) and resurrect it during run-time or something?
Thanks
Yes, you'll need to emit the type information (or other context, you weren't very specific) in your object/executable files, so that your eval can read it at runtime. You might look at Java's .class file format for inspiration; Java doesn't have eval as such, but you can dynamically spin new bytecode at runtime that must be linked in a type-safe manner. David Conrad's comment is spot-on: this information can also be used to implement reflection, if your language has such a feature.
That's as much as I can help you without more specifics.
Is there an elegant/convinient way (without creating many "empty" classes or at least they should be not annoying) to have fluent interfcaes that maintain order on compilation level.
Fluent interfaces:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluent_interface
with an idea to permit this compilation
var fluentConfig = new ConfigurationFluent().SetColor("blue")
.SetHeight(1)
.SetLength(2)
.SetDepth(3);
and decline this
var fluentConfig = new ConfigurationFluent().SetLength(2)
.SetColor("blue")
.SetHeight(1)
.SetDepth(3);
Each step in the chain needs to return an interface or class that only includes the methods that are valid to use after the current step. In other words, if SetColor must come first, ConfigurationFluent should only have a SetColor method. SetColor would then return an object that only has a SetHeight method, and so forth.
In reality, the return values could all be the same instance of ConfigurationFluent but cast to different interfaces explicitly implemented by that class.
I've got a set of three ways of doing this in C++ using essentially a compile time FSM to validate the actions. You can find the code on github.
The short answer is no, there is no elegant or convenient way to enforce an order of constructing a class that properly impelemnts the "Fluent Interface" as you've linked.
The longer answer starts with playing devil's advocate. If I had dependent properties (i.e. properties that required other properties to be set first), then I could implement them something like this:
method SetLength(int millimeters)
if color is null throw new ValidationException
length = millimeters
return this
end
(NOTE: the above does not map to any real language, it is just psuedocode)
So now I have exceptions to worry about. If I don't obey the rules, the fluent object will throw an exception. Now let's say I have a declaration like yours:
var config = new Fluent().SetLength(2).SetHeight(1).SetDepth(3).SetColor("blue");
When I catch the ValidationException because length depends on the color being set first, how am I as the user supposed to know what the correct order is? Even if I had each SetX method on a different line, the stacktrace will just give me the line where the config variable was declared in most languages. Furthermore, how am I supposed to keep the rules of this object straight in my head compared to other objects? It is a cocophony of conflicting ideals.
Such precedence checks violate the spirit of the "Fluent Interface" approach. That approach was designed for conveniently configure complex objects. You take the convenience out when you attempt to enforce order.
To properly and elegantly implement the fluent interface there are a couple of guidelines that are best observed to make consumers of your class thank you:
Provide meaningful default values: minimizes need to change values, and minimizes chances of creating an invalid object.
Do not perform configuration validation until explicitly asked to do so. That event can be when we use the configuration to create a new fully configured object, or when the consumer explicitly calls a Validate() method.
In any exceptions thrown, make sure the error message is clear and points out any inconsistencies.
maybe the compiler could check that methods are called in the same order as they are defined.
this could be a new feature for compilers.
Or maybe by means of annotations, something like:
class ConfigurationFluent {
#Called-before SetHeight
SetColor(..) {}
#Called-After SetColor
SetHeight(..) {}
#Called-After SetHeight
SetLength(..){ }
#Called-After SetLength
SetDepth(..) {}
}
You can implement a state machine of valid sequence of operations and on each method call the state machine and verify if the sequence of operation is allowed or throw an exception if not.
I will not suggest this approach for Configurations though, it can get very messy and not readable