In algebra if I make the statement x + y = 3, the variables I used will hold the values either 2 and 1 or 1 and 2. I know that assignment in programming is not the same thing, but I got to wondering. If I wanted to represent the value of, say, a quantumly weird particle, I would want my variable to have two values at the same time and to have it resolve into one or the other later. Or maybe I'm just dreaming?
Is it possible to say something like i = 3 or 2;?
This is one of the features planned for Perl 6 (junctions), with syntax that should look like my $a = 1|2|3;
If ever implemented, it would work intuitively, like $a==1 being true at the same time as $a==2. Also, for example, $a+1 would give you a value of 2|3|4.
This feature is actually available in Perl5 as well through Perl6::Junction and Quantum::Superpositions modules, but without the syntax sugar (through 'functions' all and any).
At least for comparison (b < any(1,2,3)) it was also available in Microsoft Cω experimental language, however it was not documented anywhere (I just tried it when I was looking at Cω and it just worked).
You can't do this with native types, but there's nothing stopping you from creating a variable object (presuming you are using an OO language) which has a range of values or even a probability density function rather than an actual value.
You will also need to define all the mathematical operators between your variables and your variables and native scalars. Same goes for the equality and assignment operators.
numpy arrays do something similar for vectors and matrices.
That's also the kind of thing you can do in Prolog. You define rules that constraint your variables and then let Prolog resolve them ...
It takes some time to get used to it, but it is wonderful for certain problems once you know how to use it ...
Damien Conways Quantum::Superpositions might do what you want,
https://metacpan.org/pod/Quantum::Superpositions
You might need your crack-pipe however.
What you're asking seems to be how to implement a Fuzzy Logic system. These have been around for some time and you can undoubtedly pick up a library for the common programming languages quite easily.
You could use a struct and handle the operations manualy. Otherwise, no a variable only has 1 value at a time.
A variable is nothing more than an address into memory. That means a variable describes exactly one place in memory (length depending on the type). So as long as we have no "quantum memory" (and we dont have it, and it doesnt look like we will have it in near future), the answer is a NO.
If you want to program and to modell this behaviour, your way would be to use a an array (with length equal to the number of max. multiple values). With this comes the increased runtime, hence the computations must be done on each of the values (e.g. x+y, must compute with 2 different values x1+y1, x2+y2, x1+y2 and x2+y1).
In Perl , you can .
If you use Scalar::Util , you can have a var take 2 values . One if it's used in string context , and another if it's used in a numerical context .
Related
I am trying to solve a problem involving the equating of sums of exponentials.
This is how I would do it hardcoded:
#NLconstraint(m, exp(x[25])==exp(x[14])+exp(x[18]))
This works fine with the rest of the code. However, when I try to do it for an arbitrary set of equations like the above I get an error. Here's my code:
#NLconstraint(m,[k=1:length(LHSSum)],sum(exp.(LHSSum[k][i]) for i=1:length(LHSSum[k]))==sum(exp.(RHSSum[k][i]) for i=1:length(RHSSum[k])))
where LHSSum and RHSSum are arrays containing arrays of the elements that need to be exponentiated and then summed over. That is LHSSum[1]=[x[1],x[2],x[3],...,x[n]]. Where x[i] are variables of type JuMP.Variable. Note that length(LHSSum)=length(RHSSum).
The error returned is:
LoadError: exp is not defined for type Variable. Are you trying to build a nonlinear problem? Make sure you use #NLconstraint/#NLobjective.
So a simple solution would be to simply do all the exponentiating and summing outside of the #NLconstraint function, so the input would be a scalar. However, this too presents a problem since exp(x) is not defined since x is of type JuMP.variable, whereas exp expects something of type real. This is strange since I am able to calculate exponentials just fine when the function is called within an #NLconstraint(). I.e. when I code this line#NLconstraint(m,exp(x)==exp(z)+exp(y)) instead of the earlier line, no errors are thrown.
Another thing I thought to do would be a Taylor Series expansion, but this too presents a problem since it goes into #NLconstraint land for powers greater than 2, and then I get stuck with the same vectorization problem.
So I feel stuck, I feel like if JuMP would allow for the vectorized evaluation of #NLconstraint like it does for #constraint, this would not even be an issue. Another fix would be if JuMP implements it's own exp function to allow for the exponentiation of JuMP.Variable type. However, as it is I don't see a way to solve this problem in general using the JuMP framework. Do any of you have any solutions to this problem? Any clever workarounds that I am missing?
I'm confused why i isn't used in the expressions you wrote. Do you mean:
#NLconstraint(m, [k = 1:length(LHSSum)],
sum(exp(LHSSum[k][i]) for i in 1:length(LHSSum[k]))
==
sum(exp(RHSSum[k][i]) for i in 1:length(RHSSum[k])))
The large majority of SonarLint rules that I've come across in Java seemed plausible and justified. However, ever since I've started using SonarLint for VB.NET, I've come across several rules that left me questioning their usefulness or even whether or not they are working correctly.
I'd like to know if this is simply a problem of me using some VB.NET constructs in a suboptimal way or whether the rule really is flawed.
(Apologies if this question is a little longer. I didn't know if I should create a separate question for each individual rule.)
The following rules I found to leave some cases unconsidered that would actually turn up as false-positives:
S1871: Two branches in the same conditional structure should not have exactly the same implementation
I found this one to bring up a lot of false-positives for me, because sometimes the order in which the conditions are checked actually does matter. Take the following pseudo code as example:
If conditionA() Then
doSomething()
ElseIf conditionB() AndAlso conditionC() Then
doSomethingElse()
ElseIf conditionD() OrElse conditionE() Then
doYetAnotherThing()
'... feel free to have even more cases in between here
Else Then
doSomething() 'Non-compliant
End If
If I wanted to follow this Sonar rule and still make the code behave the same way, I'd have to add the negated version of each ElseIf-condition to the first If-condition.
Another example would be the following switch:
Select Case i
Case 0 To 40
value = 0
Case 41 To 60
value = 1
Case 61 To 80
value = 3
Case 81 To 100
value = 5
Case Else
value = 0 'Non-compliant
There shouldn't be anything wrong with having that last case in a switch. True, I could have initialized value beforehand to 0 and ignored that last case, but then I'd have one more assignment operation than necessary. And the Java ruleset has conditioned me to always put a default case in every switch.
S1764: Identical expressions should not be used on both sides of a binary operator
This rule does not seem to take into account that some functions may return different values every time you call them, for instance collections where accessing an element removes it from the collection:
stack.Push(stack.Pop() / stack.Pop()) 'Non-compliant
I understand if this is too much of an edge case to make special exceptions for it, though.
The following rules I am not actually sure about:
S3385: "Exit" statements should not be used
While I agree that Return is more readable than Exit Sub, is it really bad to use a single Exit For to break out of a For or a For Each loop? The SonarLint rule for Java permits the use of a single break; in a loop before flagging it as an issue. Is there a reason why the default in VB.NET is more strict in that regard? Or is the rule built on the assumption that you can solve nearly all your loop problems with LINQ extension methods and lambdas?
S2374: Signed types should be preferred to unsigned ones
This rule basically states that unsigned types should not be used at all because they "have different arithmetic operators than signed ones - operators that few developers understand". In my code I am only using UInteger for ID values (because I don't need negative values and a Long would be a waste of memory in my case). They are stored in List(Of UInteger) and only ever compared to other UIntegers. Is this rule even relevant to my case (are comparisons part of these "arithmetic operators" mentioned by the rule) and what exactly would be the pitfall? And if not, wouldn't it be better to make that rule apply to arithmetic operations involving unsigned types, rather than their declaration?
S2355: Array literals should be used instead of array creation expressions
Maybe I don't know VB.NET well enough, but how exactly would I satisfy this rule in the following case where I want to create a fixed-size array where the initialization length is only known at runtime? Is this a false-positive?
Dim myObjects As Object() = New Object(someOtherList.Count - 3) {} 'Non-compliant
Sure, I could probably just use a List(Of Object). But I am curious anyway.
Thanks for raising these points. Note that not all rules apply every time. There are cases when we need to balance between false positives/false negatives/real cases. For example with identical expressions on both sides of an operator rule. Is it a bug to have the same operands? No it's not. If it was, then the compiler would report it. Is it a bad smell, is it usually a mistake? Yes in many cases. See this for example in Roslyn. Should we tune this rule to exclude some cases? Yes we should, there's nothing wrong with 2 << 2. So there's a lot of balancing that needs to happen, and we try to settle for an implementation that brings the most value for the users.
For the points you raised:
Two branches in the same conditional structure should not have exactly the same implementation
This rule generally states that having two blocks of code match exactly is a bad sign. Copy-pasted code should be avoided for many reasons, for example if you need to fix the code in one place, you'll need to fix it in the other too. You're right that adding negated conditions would be a mess, but if you extract each condition into its own method (and call the negated methods inside them) with proper names, then it would probably improves the readability of your code.
For the Select Case, again, copy pasted code is always a bad sign. In this case you could do this:
Select Case i
...
Case 0 To 40
Case Else
value = 0 ' Compliant
End Select
Or simply remove the 0-40 case.
Identical expressions should not be used on both sides of a binary operator
I think this is a corner case. See the first paragraph of the answer.
"Exit" statements should not be used
It's almost always true that by choosing another type of loop, or changing the stop condition, you can get away without using any "Exit" statements. It's good practice to have a single exit point from loops.
Signed types should be preferred to unsigned ones
This is a legacy rule from SonarQube VB.NET, and I agree with you that it shouldn't be enabled by default in SonarLint. I created the following ticket in our JIRA: https://jira.sonarsource.com/browse/SLVS-1074
Array literals should be used instead of array creation expressions
Yes, it seems to be a false positive, we shouldn't report on array creations when the size is explicitly specified. https://jira.sonarsource.com/browse/SLVS-1075
I'm trying to figure out if there's a way in mathematica where I can solve for particular variables when given other variables and a set of equations. Essentially there are 6 variables, and I'm given 3 of them and have to calculate the others using these equations-
Variables-
B,Qs,f0,R,c,L
Equations-
f0=1/(2*Pi*Sqrt[L*c])
Qs=(w*L)/R
w=2*Pi*f0
B=f0/Qs
We are given the values of any 3 of those variables and have to figure out the rest using those values.
I was thinking perhaps using Eliminate but I'm not sure exactly how that would be structured as I've only used it previously with set variables that don't change and a single output.
When using the Solve function with Mathematica, you can specify for what variables you want Solve to specify the solutions. Note that Solve may not be able to find expressions in terms of these variables (if the equations you give it are contradictory or insufficient) or for all values as some functions have no inverse or only partial inverses.
Your question looks a lot like homework in Electromagnetics, but here is an example with your original problem. You will have to adapt these ideas to give to Solve the set of variables you are looking for. Also remember to use == to specify equality testing. A simple = is for immediate assignment to a variable.
Solve[{f0 == 1/(2*Pi*Sqrt[L*c]), Qs == (w*L)/R, w == 2*Pi*f0, B == f0/Qs}, {f0, B, c}]
{{f0->w/(2 [Pi]), B->w/(2 [Pi] Qs), c->L/(Qs^2 R^2)}}
I have got a term from which I want to get set of variables name.
Eg. input: my_m(aa,b,B,C,max(D,C),D)
output: [B,C,D] (no need to be ordered as order of appearance in input)
(That would call like set_variable_name(Input,Output).)
I can simply get [B,C,D,C,D] from the input, but don't know how to implement set (only one appearance in output). I've tried something like storing in rbtrees but that failed, because of
only_one([],T,T) :- !.
only_one([X|XS],B,C) :- rb_in(X,X,B), !, only_one(XS,B,C).
only_one([X|XS],B,C) :- rb_insert(B,X,X,U), only_one(XS,U,C).
it returns tree with only one node and unification like B=C, C=D.... I think I get it why - because of unification of X while questioning rb_in(..).
So, how to store only once that name of variable? Or is that fundamentally wrong idea because we are using logic programming? If you want to know why I need this, it's because we are asked to implement A* algorithm in Prolog and this is one part of making search space.
You can use sort/2, which also removes duplicates.
Howcome some languages like PHP and Python use dynamic name resolution?
The only time I've ever thought of using it is to do something like this Python code, to save me from having to explicitly parameters to format:
"{a} {b} {c} {d}".format(**locals())
but it doesn't really take much work to just be explicit (and is a bit less error-prone):
"{a} {b} {c} {d}".format(a=a, b=b, c=c, d=d)
And for setting/getting locals in the same scope, I don't see why anyone would ever use that instead of a map.
Without dynamic name resolution, typos are caught, and you can automatically rename variables without breaking your program (unless something can still read the names of the variables). With dynamic name resolution, you get something that saves you from typing a line? Am I missing something?
Python documentation says they might remove it in the future. Is it more of a historical thing? What's an actual good use case for dynamic name resolution?
Most dynamically typed languages simply don't have a choice. For an expression like x.y you can't look up y statically, since what fields are available depends on the type of x which is only available at runtime.
There are ways around this (such as type inference or JIT), but since the base language has to have dynamic name lookup, most such languages make it into a feature (see e.g. the power of Lua tables).