Suppose I have an algol-like language, with static types and the following piece of code:
a := b + c * d;
where a is a float, b an integer, c a double and d a long. Then, the language will convert d to long to operate with c, and b to double to operate with c*d result. So, after that, the double result of b+c*d will be converted to float to assign the result to a. But, when it happens?, I mean, do all the conversions happens in runtime or compile time?
And if I have:
int x; //READ FROM USER KEYBOARD.
if (x > 5) {
a:= b + c * d;
}
else {
a := b + c;
}
The above code has conditionals. If the compiler converts this at compile time, some portion may never run. Is this correct?
You cannot do a conversion at compile-time any more than you can do an addition at compile time (unless the compiler can determine the value of the variable, perhaps because it is actually constant).
The compiler can (and does) emit a program with instructions which add and multiply the value of variables. It also emits instructions which convert the type of a stored value into a different type prior to computation, if that is necessary.
Languages which do not have variable types fixed at compile-time do have to perform checks at runtime and conditionally convert values to different types. But I don't believe that is the case with any of the languages included in the general category of "Algol-like".
Related
How come that in the following snippet
int a = 7;
int b = 3;
double c = 0;
c = a / b;
c ends up having the value 2, rather than 2.3333, as one would expect. If a and b are doubles, the answer does turn to 2.333. But surely because c already is a double it should have worked with integers?
So how come int/int=double doesn't work?
This is because you are using the integer division version of operator/, which takes 2 ints and returns an int. In order to use the double version, which returns a double, at least one of the ints must be explicitly casted to a double.
c = a/(double)b;
Here it is:
a) Dividing two ints performs integer division always. So the result of a/b in your case can only be an int.
If you want to keep a and b as ints, yet divide them fully, you must cast at least one of them to double: (double)a/b or a/(double)b or (double)a/(double)b.
b) c is a double, so it can accept an int value on assignement: the int is automatically converted to double and assigned to c.
c) Remember that on assignement, the expression to the right of = is computed first (according to rule (a) above, and without regard of the variable to the left of =) and then assigned to the variable to the left of = (according to (b) above). I believe this completes the picture.
With very few exceptions (I can only think of one), C++ determines the
entire meaning of an expression (or sub-expression) from the expression
itself. What you do with the results of the expression doesn't matter.
In your case, in the expression a / b, there's not a double in
sight; everything is int. So the compiler uses integer division.
Only once it has the result does it consider what to do with it, and
convert it to double.
When you divide two integers, the result will be an integer, irrespective of the fact that you store it in a double.
c is a double variable, but the value being assigned to it is an int value because it results from the division of two ints, which gives you "integer division" (dropping the remainder). So what happens in the line c=a/b is
a/b is evaluated, creating a temporary of type int
the value of the temporary is assigned to c after conversion to type double.
The value of a/b is determined without reference to its context (assignment to double).
In C++ language the result of the subexpresison is never affected by the surrounding context (with some rare exceptions). This is one of the principles that the language carefully follows. The expression c = a / b contains of an independent subexpression a / b, which is interpreted independently from anything outside that subexpression. The language does not care that you later will assign the result to a double. a / b is an integer division. Anything else does not matter. You will see this principle followed in many corners of the language specification. That's juts how C++ (and C) works.
One example of an exception I mentioned above is the function pointer assignment/initialization in situations with function overloading
void foo(int);
void foo(double);
void (*p)(double) = &foo; // automatically selects `foo(fouble)`
This is one context where the left-hand side of an assignment/initialization affects the behavior of the right-hand side. (Also, reference-to-array initialization prevents array type decay, which is another example of similar behavior.) In all other cases the right-hand side completely ignores the left-hand side.
The / operator can be used for integer division or floating point division. You're giving it two integer operands, so it's doing integer division and then the result is being stored in a double.
This is technically a language-dependent, but almost all languages treat this subject the same. When there is a type mismatch between two data types in an expression, most languages will try to cast the data on one side of the = to match the data on the other side according to a set of predefined rules.
When dividing two numbers of the same type (integers, doubles, etc.) the result will always be of the same type (so 'int/int' will always result in int).
In this case you have
double var = integer result
which casts the integer result to a double after the calculation in which case the fractional data is already lost. (most languages will do this casting to prevent type inaccuracies without raising an exception or error).
If you'd like to keep the result as a double you're going to want to create a situation where you have
double var = double result
The easiest way to do that is to force the expression on the right side of an equation to cast to double:
c = a/(double)b
Division between an integer and a double will result in casting the integer to the double (note that when doing maths, the compiler will often "upcast" to the most specific data type this is to prevent data loss).
After the upcast, a will wind up as a double and now you have division between two doubles. This will create the desired division and assignment.
AGAIN, please note that this is language specific (and can even be compiler specific), however almost all languages (certainly all the ones I can think of off the top of my head) treat this example identically.
For the same reasons above, you'll have to convert one of 'a' or 'b' to a double type. Another way of doing it is to use:
double c = (a+0.0)/b;
The numerator is (implicitly) converted to a double because we have added a double to it, namely 0.0.
The important thing is one of the elements of calculation be a float-double type. Then to get a double result you need to cast this element like shown below:
c = static_cast<double>(a) / b;
or
c = a / static_cast(b);
Or you can create it directly::
c = 7.0 / 3;
Note that one of elements of calculation must have the '.0' to indicate a division of a float-double type by an integer. Otherwise, despite the c variable be a double, the result will be zero too (an integer).
I'm trying to crate a function in Fortran (95) that that will have as input a string (test) and a character (class). The function will compare each character of test with the character class and return a logical that is .true. if they are of the same class1 and .false. otherwise.
The function (and the program to run it) is defined below:
!====== WRAPPER MODULE ======!
module that_has_function
implicit none
public
contains
!====== THE ACTUAL FUNCTION ======!
function isa(test ,class )
implicit none
logical, allocatable, dimension(:) :: isa
character*(*) :: test
character :: class
integer :: lt
character(len=:), allocatable :: both
integer, allocatable, dimension(:) :: intcls
integer :: i
lt = len_trim(test)
allocate(isa(lt))
allocate(intcls(lt+1))
allocate(character(len=lt+1) :: both)
isa = .false.
both = class//trim(test)
do i = 1,lt+1
select case (both(i:i))
case ('A':'Z'); intcls(i) = 1! uppercase alphabetic
case ('a':'a'); intcls(i) = 2! lowercase alphabetic
case ('0':'9'); intcls(i) = 3! numeral
case default; intcls(i) = 99! checks if they are equal
end select
end do
isa = intcls(1).eq.intcls(2:)
return
end function isa
end module that_has_function
!====== CALLER PROGRAM ======!
program that_uses_module
use that_has_function
implicit none
integer :: i
i = 65
! Reducing the result of "isa" to a scalar with "all" works:
! V-V
do while (all(isa(achar(i),'A')))
print*, achar(i)
i = i + 1
end do
! Without the reduction it doesn''t:
!do while (isa(achar(i),'A'))
! print*, achar(i)
! i = i + 1
!end do
end program that_uses_module
I would like to use this function in do while loops, for example, as it is showed in the code above.
The problem is that, for example, when I use two scalars (rank 0) as input the function still returns the result as an array (rank 1), so to make it work as the condition of a do while loop I have to reduce the result to a scalar with all, for example.
My question is: can I make the function conditionally return a scalar? If not, then is it possible to make the function work with vector and scalar inputs and return, respectively, vector and scalar outputs?
1. What I call class here is, for example, uppercase or lowercase letters, or numbers, etc. ↩
You can not make the function conditionally return a scalar or a vector.
But you guessed right, there is a solution. You will use a generic function.
You write 2 functions, one that takes scalar and return scalar isas, the 2nd one takes vector and return vector isav.
From outside of the module you will be able to call them with the same name: isa. You only need to write its interface at the beginning of the module:
module that_has_function
implicit none
public
interface isa
module procedure isas, isav
end interface isa
contains
...
When isa is called, the compiler will know which one to use thanks to the type of the arguments.
The rank of a function result cannot be conditional on the flow of execution. This includes selection by evaluating an expression.
If reduction of a scalar result is too much, then you'll probably be horrified to see what can be done instead. I think, for instance, of derived types and defined operations.
However, I'd consider it bad design in general for the function reference to be unclear in its rank. My answer, then, is: no you can't, but that's fine because you don't really want to.
Regarding the example of minval, a few things.1 As noted in the comment, minval may take a dim argument. So
integer :: X(5,4) = ...
print *, MINVAL(X) ! Result a scalar
print *, MINVAL(X,dim=1) ! Result a rank-1 array
is in keeping with the desire of the question.
However, the rank of the function result is still "known" at the time of referencing the function. Simply having a dim argument means that the result is an array of rank one less than the input array rather than a scalar. The rank of the result doesn't depend on the value of the dim argument.
As noted in the other answer, you can have similar functionality with a generic interface. Again, the resolved specific function (whichever is chosen) will have a result of known rank at the time of reference.
1 The comment was actually about minloc but minval seems more fitting to the topic.
I'm puzzled as to how arguments are passed into a cppFunction when we use Rcpp. In particular, I wonder if someone can explain the result of the following code.
library(Rcpp)
cppFunction("void test(double &x, NumericVector y) {
x = 2016;
y[0] = 2016;
}")
a = 1L
b = 1L
c = 1
d = 1
test(a,b)
test(c,d)
cat(a,b,c,d) #this prints "1 1 1 2016"
As stated before in other areas, Rcpp establishes convenient classes around R's SEXP objects.
For the first parameter, the double type does not have a default SEXP object. This is because within R, there is no such thing as a scalar. Thus, new memory is allocate making the & reference incompatible. Hence, the variable scope for the modification is limited to the function and there is never an update to the result. As a result, for both test cases, you will see 1.
For the second case, there is a mismatch between object classes. Within the first call object supplied is of type integer due to the L appended on the end, which conflicts with the C++ function expected type of numeric. The issue is resolved once the L is dropped as the object is instantiated as a numeric. Therefore, an intermediary memory location does not need to be created that is of the correct type to receive the value. Hence, the modification in the second case is able to propagate back to R.
e.g.
a = 1L
class(a)
# "integer"
a = 1
class(a)
# "numeric"
I' m having a problem parsing the lat and long cords from TinyGPS++ to a Double or a string. The code that i'm using is:
String latt = ((gps.location.lat(),6));
String lngg = ((gps.location.lng(),6));
Serial.println(latt);
Serial.println(lngg);
The output that i'm getting is:
0.06
Does somebody know what i'm doing wrong? Does it have something to do with rounding? (Math.Round) function in Arduino.
Thanks!
There are two problems:
1. This does not compile:
String latt = ((gps.location.lat(),6));
The error I get is
Wouter.ino:4: warning: left-hand operand of comma has no effect
Wouter:4: error: invalid conversion from 'int' to 'const char*'
Wouter:4: error: initializing argument 1 of 'String::String(const char*)'
There is nothing in the definition of the String class that would allow this statement. I was unable to reproduce printing values of 0.06 (in your question) or 0.006 (in a later comment). Please edit your post to have the exact code that compiles, runs and prints those values.
2. You are unintentionally using the comma operator.
There are two places a comma can be used: to separate arguments to a function call, and to separate multiple expressions which evaluate to the last expression.
You're not calling a function here, so it is the latter use. What does that mean? Here's an example:
int x = (1+y, 2*y, 3+(int)sin(y), 4);
The variable x will be assigned the value of the last expression, 4. There are very few reasons that anyone would actually use the comma operator in this way. It is much more understandable to write:
int x;
1+y; // Just a calculation, result never used
2*y; // Just a calculation, result never used
3 + (int) sin(y); // Just a calculation, result never used
x = 4; // A (trivial) calculation, result stored in 'x'
The compiler will usually optimize out the first 3 statements and only generate code for the last one1. I usually see the comma operator in #define macros that are trying to avoid multiple statements.
For your code, the compiler sees this
((gps.location.lat(),6))
And evaluates it as a call to gps.location.lat(), which returns a double value. The compiler throws this value away, and even warns you that it "has no effect."
Next, it sees a 6, which is the actual value of this expression. The parentheses get popped, leaving the 6 value to be assigned to the left-hand side of the statement, String latt =.
If you look at the declaration of String, it does not define how to take an int like 6 and either construct a new String, or assign it 6. The compiler sees that String can be constructed from const char *, so it tells you that it can't convert a numeric 6 to a const char *.
Unlike a compiler, I think I can understand what you intended:
double latt = gps.location.lat();
double lngg = gps.location.lon();
Serial.println( latt, 6 );
Serial.println( lngg, 6 );
The 6 is intended as an argument to Serial.println. And those arguments are correctly separated by a comma.
As a further bonus, it does not use the String class, which will undoubtedly cause headaches later. Really, don't use String. Instead, hold on to numeric values, like ints and floats, and convert them to text at the last possible moment (e.g, with println).
I have often wished for a compiler that would do what I mean, not what I say. :D
1 Depending on y's type, evaluating the expression 2*y may have side effects that cannot be optimized away. The streaming operator << is a good example of a mathematical operator (left shift) with side effects that cannot be optimized away.
And in your code, calling gps.location.lat() may have modified something internal to the gps or location classes, so the compiler may not have optimized the function call away.
In all cases, the result of the call is not assigned because only the last expression value (the 6) is used for assignment.
I was wondering. Are there languages that use only pass-by-reference as their eval strategy?
I don't know what an "eval strategy" is, but Perl subroutine calls are pass-by-reference only.
sub change {
$_[0] = 10;
}
$x = 5;
change($x);
print $x; # prints "10"
change(0); # raises "Modification of a read-only value attempted" error
VB (pre .net), VBA & VBS default to ByRef although it can be overriden when calling/defining the sub or function.
FORTRAN does; well, preceding such concepts as pass-by-reference, one should probably say that it uses pass-by-address; a FORTRAN function like:
INTEGER FUNCTION MULTIPLY_TWO_INTS(A, B)
INTEGER A, B
MULTIPLY_BY_TWO_INTS = A * B
RETURN
will have a C-style prototype of:
extern int MULTIPLY_TWO_INTS(int *A, int *B);
and you could call it via something like:
int result, a = 1, b = 100;
result = MULTIPLY_TWO_INTS(&a, &b);
Another example are languages that do not know function arguments as such but use stacks. An example would be Forth and its derivatives, where a function can change the variable space (stack) in whichever way it wants, modifying existing elements as well as adding/removing elements. "prototype comments" in Forth usually look something like
(argument list -- return value list)
and that means the function takes/processes a certain, not necessarily constant, number of arguments and returns, again, not necessarily a constant, number of elements. I.e. you can have a function that takes a number N as argument and returns N elements - preallocating an array, if you so like.
How about Brainfuck?