In how many languages is Null not equal to anything not even Null?
It's this way in SQL (as a logic language) because null means unknown/undefined.
However, in programming languages (like say, C++ or C#), a null pointer/reference is a specific value with a specific meaning -- nothing.
Two nothings are equivilent, but two unknowns are not. The confusion comes from the fact that the same name (null) is used for both concepts.
In VB6 the expression Null = Null will produce Null instead of True as you would expect.
This will cause a runtime error if you try to assign it to a Boolean, however if you use it
as the condition of "If ... Then" it will act like False. Moreover Null <> Null will also
produce Null, so:
In VB6 you could say that Null is neither equal to itself (or anything else), nor unequal!
You're supposed to test for it using the IsNull() function.
VB6 also has other special values:
Nothing for object references. Nothing = Nothing is a compile error. (you're supposed to compare it using "is")
Missing for optional parameters which haven't been given. It has no literal representation so you can't even write Missing = Missing. (the test is IsMissing(foo))
Empty for uninitialized variables. This one does test equal to itself although there's also a function IsEmpty().
... let me know if I've forgotten one
I remember being a bit disgusted with VB.
Oracle is this way.
SELECT * FROM dual WHERE NULL=null; --no rows returned
MySQL has a null-safe equality operator, <=>, which returns true if both sides are equal or both sides are null. See MySQL Docs.
In C#, Nullable<bool> has interesting properties with respect to logical operators, but the equality operator is the same as other types in that language (i.e., ((bool?)null == (bool?)null) == true).
To preserve the short-circuited behavior of the short-circuited logical operators, and to preserve consistency with the non-short-circuited logical operators, the nullable boolean has some interesting properties. For example: true || null == true. false && null == false, etc. This stands in direct contradiction with other three-valued logic languages such as ANSI SQL.
You can make ruby work that way:
class Null
def self.==(other);false;end
end
n=Null
print "Null equals nothing" if n!=Null
In SQL you would have to do something like:
WHERE column is NULL
rather than
WHERE column = NULL
Related
I used an || operator within the Kotlin IDEA but was throwing an error. This confused me, one of the first queries when searching google was a closed stack overflow thread with a snarky "answer" comment which wasn't helpful.
The first query in google hit is some function "or" gibberish.
My code:
if(inputAmount >= 0 || inputAmount = -99)
I understand what is "wrong". there was some logic errors the second part of the "if" statement should have been inputAmount == -99. In my case, the code needed to further be adjusted because of the actual type that was being used.
if(inputAmount >= 0.0 || inputAmount.toInt() == -99)
This appears to be different then other languages in that other languages just simply allow you to have your "logic" error with the "inputAmount = -99". So the '||' operator is allowed and is similar to most other languages.
So first step if encounter this error is to make sure your logic is correct. (check)
infix functions > sense according to the documentation "or" and "and" are infix functions that don't use the short circuit, is it technically wrong to call the "||" operator an "or" operator and should be called logical 'or'?
when referring to the infix 'or' how do people refer to that in Kotlin?
in boolean logic takes statements. A=b is a statement that is always true
No, it isn't. In C, C++ and Java it's an expression, and its value is the value of b. If b is false, it's false, if b is 10, it's 10. And you really don't want to confuse "statements" in programming languages with "statements" in logic; they are entirely different things.
Separately, C and C++ (but not Java) allow || to work on all integral types, and not just booleans (because they didn't originally have booleans as a separate type).
when referring to the infix function 'or' how do Kotlin folk typically refer to that?
Bitwise or for integral types, and I've never actually seen anyone use non-short-circuiting or on booleans, but if I had to I'd call it... well, non-short-circuiting or.
is it technically wrong to call the "||" operator an "or" operator and should be called logical 'or'
Both || and or (on booleans) are "logical 'or'" and I don't see any problem with calling them simply 'or'. If you need to distinguish use short-circuiting vs non-short-circuiting. But again, I've never actually ran into a use of the non-short-circuiting version.
In VB.NET this happens:
Dim x As System.Nullable(Of Decimal) = Nothing
Dim y As System.Nullable(Of Decimal) = Nothing
y = 5
If x <> y Then
Console.WriteLine("true")
Else
Console.WriteLine("false") '' <-- I got this. Why?
End If
But in C# this happens:
decimal? x = default(decimal?);
decimal? y = default(decimal?);
y = 5;
if (x != y)
{
Debug.WriteLine("true"); // <-- I got this -- I'm with you, C# :)
}
else
{
Debug.WriteLine("false");
}
Why is there a difference?
VB.NET and C#.NET are different languages, built by different teams who have made different assumptions about usage; in this case the semantics of a NULL comparison.
My personal preference is for the VB.NET semantics, which in essence gives NULL the semantics "I don't know yet". Then the comparison of 5 to "I don't know yet". is naturally "I don't know yet"; ie NULL. This has the additional advantage of mirroring the behaviour of NULL in (most if not all) SQL databases. This is also a more standard (than C#'s) interpretation of three-valued logic, as explained here.
The C# team made different assumptions about what NULL means, resulting in the behaviour difference you show. Eric Lippert wrote a blog about the meaning of NULL in C#. Per Eric Lippert: "I also wrote about the semantics of nulls in VB / VBScript and JScript here and here".
In any environment in which NULL values are possible, it is imprtant to recognize that the Law of the Excluded Middle (ie that A or ~A is tautologically true) no longer can be relied on.
Update:
A bool (as opposed to a bool?) can only take the values TRUE and FALSE. However a language implementation of NULL must decide on how NULL propagates through expressions. In VB the expressions 5=null and 5<>null BOTH return false. In C#, of the comparable expressions 5==null and 5!=null only the second first [updated 2014-03-02 - PG] returns false. However, in ANY environment that supports null, it is incumbent on the programmer to know the truth tables and null-propagation used by that language.
Update
Eric Lippert's blog articles (mentioned in his comments below) on semantics are now at:
Sep. 30, 2003 - A Whole Lot of Nothing
Oct. 1, 2003 - A Little More on Nothing
Because x <> y returns Nothing instead of true. It is simply not defined since x is not defined. (similar to SQL null).
Note: VB.NET Nothing <> C# null.
You also have to compare the value of a Nullable(Of Decimal) only if it has a value.
So the VB.NET above compares similar to this(which looks less incorrect):
If x.HasValue AndAlso y.HasValue AndAlso x <> y Then
Console.WriteLine("true")
Else
Console.WriteLine("false")
End If
The VB.NET language specification:
7.1.1 Nullable Value Types
... A nullable value type can contain the same values as the non-nullable
version of the type as well as the null value. Thus, for a nullable
value type, assigning Nothing to a variable of the type sets the value
of the variable to the null value, not the zero value of the value
type.
For example:
Dim x As Integer = Nothing
Dim y As Integer? = Nothing
Console.WriteLine(x) ' Prints zero '
Console.WriteLine(y) ' Prints nothing (because the value of y is the null value) '
Look at the generated CIL (I've converted both to C#):
C#:
private static void Main(string[] args)
{
decimal? x = null;
decimal? y = null;
y = 5M;
decimal? CS$0$0000 = x;
decimal? CS$0$0001 = y;
if ((CS$0$0000.GetValueOrDefault() != CS$0$0001.GetValueOrDefault()) ||
(CS$0$0000.HasValue != CS$0$0001.HasValue))
{
Console.WriteLine("true");
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("false");
}
}
Visual Basic:
[STAThread]
public static void Main()
{
decimal? x = null;
decimal? y = null;
y = 5M;
bool? VB$LW$t_struct$S3 = new bool?(decimal.Compare(x.GetValueOrDefault(), y.GetValueOrDefault()) != 0);
bool? VB$LW$t_struct$S1 = (x.HasValue & y.HasValue) ? VB$LW$t_struct$S3 : null;
if (VB$LW$t_struct$S1.GetValueOrDefault())
{
Console.WriteLine("true");
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("false");
}
}
You'll see that the comparison in Visual Basic returns Nullable<bool> (not bool, false or true!). And undefined converted to bool is false.
Nothing compared to whatever is always Nothing, not false in Visual Basic (it is the same as in SQL).
The problem that's observed here is a special case of a more general problem, which is that the number of different definitions of equality that may be useful in at least some circumstances exceeds the number of commonly-available means to express them. This problem is in some cases made worse by an unfortunate belief that it is confusing to have different means of testing equality yield different results, and such confusion might be avoided by having the different forms of equality yield the same results whenever possible.
In reality, the fundamental cause of confusion is a misguided belief that the different forms of equality and inequality testing should be expected to yield the same result, notwithstanding the fact that different semantics are useful in different circumstances. For example, from an arithmetic standpoint, it's useful to be able to have Decimal which differ only in the number of trailing zeroes compare as equal. Likewise for double values like positive zero and negative zero. On the other hand, from a caching or interning standpoint, such semantics can be deadly. Suppose, for example, one had a Dictionary<Decimal, String> such that myDict[someDecimal] should equal someDecimal.ToString(). Such an object would seem reasonable if one had many Decimal values that one wanted to convert to string and expected there to be many duplicates. Unfortunately, if used such caching to convert 12.3 m and 12.40 m, followed by 12.30 m and 12.4 m, the latter values would yield "12.3", and "12.40" instead of "12.30" and "12.4".
Returning to the matter at hand, there is more than one sensible way of comparing nullable objects for equality. C# takes the standpoint that its == operator should mirror the behavior of Equals. VB.NET takes the standpoint that its behavior should mirror that of some other languages, since anyone who wants the Equals behavior could use Equals. In some sense, the right solution would be to have a three-way "if" construct, and require that if the conditional expression returns a three-valued result, code must specify what should happen in the null case. Since that is not an option with languages as they are, the next best alternative is to simply learn how different languages work and recognize that they are not the same.
Incidentally, Visual Basic's "Is" operator, which is lacking in C, can be used to test for whether a nullable object is, in fact, null. While one might reasonably question whether an if test should accept a Boolean?, having the normal comparison operators return Boolean? rather than Boolean when invoked on nullable types is a useful feature. Incidentally, in VB.NET, if one attempts to use the equality operator rather than Is, one will get a warning that the result of the comparison will always be Nothing, and one should use Is if one wants to test if something is null.
May be
this
post well help you:
If I remember correctly, 'Nothing' in VB means "the default value". For a value type, that's the default value, for a reference type, that would be null. Thus, assigning nothing to a struct, is no problem at all.
This is a definite weirdness of VB.
In VB, if you want to compare two nullable types, you should use Nullable.Equals().
In your example, it should be:
Dim x As System.Nullable(Of Decimal) = Nothing
Dim y As System.Nullable(Of Decimal) = Nothing
y = 5
If Not Nullable.Equals(x, y) Then
Console.WriteLine("true")
Else
Console.WriteLine("false")
End If
Your VB code is simply incorrect - if you change the "x <> y" to "x = y" you will still have "false" as the result. The most common way of expression this for nullable instances is "Not x.Equals(y)", and this will yield the same behavior as "x != y" in C#.
I always use AndAlso while checking multiple conditions as it doesn't evaluate right side unless left one is true. I don't see any situation where someone would like to evaluate right side even if left one fails. If it was needed then why they didn't include same in C#.
Update:
As accepted answer pointed out that it exists because it is used for bitwise operation, that fine enough but I still think they would have overloaded And operator to serve both purposes and just not created AndAlso. If anyone can pour some light on it, this question is still open :)
They included the same in C#. In C# you can use & (And) or && (AndAlso).
There's no real use case i can imagine for the not short-circuit operator when comparing booleans, but And can be used with numeric values, and it then does a bitwise comparison. That's why it exists. But when comparing boolean types, you'll always be using the short-circuit version.
And is also a bit operator. Here is an example showing a mix of And an AndAlso.
Dim foo? As Integer = 5
If foo.HasValue AndAlso (foo And 1) = 1 AndAlso (foo And 4) = 4 Then
Stop
End If
I've come across some code that looks something like this
If (condition) Then
array(index) = array(index) Or variable
End If
Being unfamiliar with VB, it looks to me like some kind of horrid result of a love affair between an assignment statement and a condition clause.
Functionally, I thought it looked like some kind of ?: ternary operation. I now assume it is, though certainly not in a form I'm used to.
I'm aware that the first branch will assign array(index) to itself, that's essentially how the code I'm working on works. I don't THINK it's relevant to the question, but it kinda weirds me out, and there is often more going on than what I realize with VB.
Not a duplicate of Is there a conditional ternary operator in VB.NET? since that question is asking if there IS one, rather than "what the heck does this mean"
What it's not.
There is no ternary operator in VBA. The closest you get is IIf, which evaluates both true and false expressions (so don't use it when either branch has side-effects!):
IIf({bool-expression}, {value-if-true}, {value-if-false})
So it's not anything like a ternary.
We don't know what's in array(index), but let's assume it's some Long:
array(index) = SomeLongInteger Or variable
What you're looking at is a regular assignment:
foo = 42 Or variable
The runtime is going to assign foo with a value. So first it must compute the right-hand side of the assignment (=) operator:
42 Or Variable
The Or operator is often used as a logical operator in Boolean expressions.
However the above expression isn't a Boolean expression, and the Or operator isn't a logical operator here.
What it is.
It's a bitwise operator (in VB the logical and bitwise operators are the same, which is indeed a bit (pun not intended) confusing). In the assignment foo = 42 Or Variable, foo will take the value of the bitwise comparison of 42 Or Variable.
Debug.Print 42 Or 12 'prints 46
How?
Think in binary. This is 42:
00101010
This is 12:
00001100
Then you bitwise-or the two values (remember your truth tables? True Or True = True; True Or False = True; False Or False = False) and you get this:
00101110
..which is the binary representation for - that's right - 46.
So, array(index) = array(index) Or variable does the following:
Read the value of array(index)
Read the value of variable
Bitwise-Or the two values
Assign the result of that operation back to array(index)
In VB.NET, there's no == operator for comparison, so the = operator serves that purpose as well as assignment. I have a function, and I want it to return the boolean result of a comparison, without storing that result in a variable:
Private Function foo() As Boolean
Dim bar As Integer = 1
Return bar = 2
End Function
Returns: False
OK, but what's the value of bar?
Private Function foo() As KeyValuePair(Of Boolean, Integer)
Dim bar As Integer = 1
Return New KeyValuePair(Of Boolean, Integer)(bar = 2, bar)
End Function
Returns: False, 1
It looks like = will perform a comparison when the statement context demands it, but is this guaranteed? That is, can I be sure that bar will never be set to 2 in this situation?
Also, I know that VB.NET doesn't allow chained inline assignments, which may be for the best. Does this odd = behavior cause any other quirks I should be aware of?
You cannot do in-line assignments in VB, Assignment is an explicit statement:
[Let] <<target-reference>> = <<value-expression>>
The Let is optional and implicit, and hardly ever used anymore. The general rule that you can use to distinguish the [Let] command from equality testing is that for Let, no other keyword may come before the target-reference in the statement. AFAIK, in all cases of = as equality testing, there is one or more other keywords that precede it in the statement.
In your first example, the keyword Return precedes your =, so it's an equality test, and not an assignment.
In your first example you can do either:
Return 2
or
bar = 2
Return bar
As for your question "OK, but what's the value of bar?", bar still equals one.
= in VB cause no quirks. It works exactly as documented, and it always has (including its predecessor, BASIC back to 1968).
If you are starting to code in VB (coming from a language like C#), you should start getting used to the peculiar VB way of doing things; which is based on the idea: as simple and intuitive for the programmer as possible. "If assignation and comparison happen always in different contexts, why not using the same operator and let the context define its exact meaning?" -> VB-way of seeing things. "No, different realities have to be accounted for by different operators. End of the discussion" -> C#-way. :)
Is this reliable? Can you blindly trust on these not-always-clear-for-a-programmer bits? Sure, VB.NET peculiarities are highly-reliable and trustworthy. You can always use = (or Is on some contexts, but VS would tell you) and be completely sure that the code will do what is expected. But the question is: are you sure that you write exactly what you want?
This last question is what, perhaps, is more criticable of VB and what might give some problems to programmers from other languages: the higher the flexibility, the more likely is that you make an error; mainly if you are used to a different format.
Regarding the chained inline assignments, I honestly don't see its true utility (and never use them in C#). Regarding other differences with respect to C#, there are plenty of them; in some cases, I think that the C# approach is better; other times, the VB.NET one. On readability/length of code, I can refer to the With Statement I have always found somehow useful which is not present in C#.
One way to have 100% sure that the expression will be evaluated as an boolean expression is to use ()
e.g
Dim a = 2
Return (a = 1)
Since you cannot set a value to a variable wihtin the parenthesis.
What i want to say is: on an return statament for example you cant assing a value to a variable so, even if you use
a = 1
The compilator knows that this expression only can be an boolean expression.
The same to the if statament and so on..
Heh back in QB45 days we used to exploit the fact that "True" was the numeric value -1. So you would see code like x = 1 - x * (x < 6) (translation: increment x, but reset to 1 when it gets to 6)