Julia - SymPy creating function - function

I'm trying to create a function in the for statement. But it didn't work.
Ex:
using SymPy
list=[1,1,-1]
a(x)=2^x
b(x)=3^x
c(x)=4^x
x = symbols("x")
for i=1:length(list)
if list[i]==1
a(x)=a(x)*b(x)
elseif list[i]==-1
a(x)=a(x)*c(x)
end
end
That is to say, I would like to yield,
a(x)=2^x*3^x*3^x*4^x
However, it only returned the original function.
a(x)=2^x
I am not sure is it functional or not.
Thanks :)

This looks like a scoping issue, check the docs here: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/variables-and-scoping/
The for loop introduces its own scope, so the global a(x) that you declare outside the loop isn't affected by what's happening in your loop.
You can either wrap everything you do in a function:
function main()
list = [1, 1, -1]
...
return a(x)
end
or annotate the a(x) in your loop as global. Generally global variables are bad for performance and best avoided in Julia, so you should think about how you can structure your code into functions.
(FWIW I get a StackOverflowError for both of the solutions I mentioned here, but that's probably an issue with how you're using SymPy which I know nothing about unfortunately!)

Related

Proper way to dynamically define LUA functions

I have been playing with Lua for the past week and I ended up writing this peace of code. I find it really useful that you can dynamically create new functions that "inherit" other functions, so programmers must have a name for it. My questions are:
What is this called?
Is there a better way to do this? (cycle over a data structure and create add-on functions that "improve" existing functions)
D = {
name = {
value = nil,
offset = 0,
update = function (self)
self.value = "Berlin"
end,
},
}
--Dynamic function definition
for i in pairs(D) do
D[i].upAndWrite = function(self)
self:update()
print("upAndWrite was here")
end
end
print(D.name.value)
D.name:upAndWrite()
print(D.name.value)
Result:
nil
upAndWrite was here
Berlin
I don't think that what you're doing have special name for it, it's just on-the-fly function creation.
There are few notes regarding your code:
Proper for loop
for i in pairs(D) do
…
end
In programming, variable i is generally used for counter loops, like in
for i=1,100 do
…
end
Here, pairs returns an iterator function and the idiomatic way to use it is
for k,v in pairs(D) do
…
end
Here k is a key (like i in your code) and v is a value (use it instead of indexing table like D[k] or D[i] in your code when you need to access the corresponding value).
There's no need to create functions on the fly!
Another important thing is that you create new function on each loop iteration. While this feature is very powerful, you're not using it at all as you don't store anything using upvalues and only access data through arguments.
A better way to do it would be creating function once and assigning it to every field:
-- Define D here
do
local function upAndWrite(self)
self:update()
print("upAndWrite was here")
end
for k,v in pairs(D) do
v.upAndWrite = upAndWrite -- Use our function
end
end
-- Perform tests here
What does on-the-fly function creation allow?
As mentioned above, you can utilize this very powerful mechanism of closures in certain situations. Here's a simple example:
local t = {}
for i = 1, 100 do
-- Create function to print our value
t[i] = function() print(i) end
-- Create function to increment value by one
t[-i] = function() i=i+1 end
end
t[1]() -- Prints 1
t[20]() -- Prints 20
t[-20]() -- Increment upvalue by one
t[20]() -- Now it is 21!
This example demonstrates one possible usage of upvalues and the fact that many functions can share them. This can be useful in a variety of situations together with the fact that upvalues can't be changed by side code (without use of debug library) and can be trusted in general.
I hope my answer covers what you wanted to know.
Note: Also, this language is called Lua, not LUA.
As a whole it doesn't have a name, no. There's lots of concepts that play into this:
First Class Functions aka. functions that can be assigned to variables and passed around just like numbers or strings.
Anonymous Functions aka. functions that are created without giving it a name explicitly. All functions in Lua are technically anonymous, but often they are assigned into a variable right after creation.
Metaprogramming aka. writing programs that write programs. A loop that creates functions (or methods) on an arbitrary number of objects is very simple, but I'd count it as metaprogramming.
Lua Tables; this may seem obvious, but consider that not all languages have a feature like this. Javascript has objects which are similar, but Ruby for example has no comparable feature.
If you're gonna use pairs, you might as well make use of both variables.
for key, object in pairs(D) do
function object:upAndWrite(self)
self:update()
print("upAndWrite was here")
end
end
Though that would create many closures, which means more work for the garbage collector, more memory usage and slower execution speed.
for key, object in pairs(D) do
print(object.upAndWrite) -- All the functions are different
end
It's a good first stage, but after refactoring it a bit you could get this:
do
local method = function(self) -- Create only one closure
self:update()
print("upAndWrite was here")
end
for key, object in pairs(D) do
object.upAndWrite = method -- Use single closure many times
end
end
Now there's only one closure that's shared among all the tables.
for key, object in pairs(D) do
print(object.upAndWrite) -- All the functions are the same
end

Getting all functions in a Lua script

I'm trying to figure out a way to get all functions in a Lua script. This script has been compiled into a function through loadfile. For example, I'd want to get every function defined in the script below.
function example1()
end
local function example2()
end
local library = {}
function library:example3()
end
(function()
-- Functions like this too.
end)
The names aren't important, I'm just looking for a way to get the actual functions so I can use them in debug.getinfo and get information like the lines they were defined in. I have LuaJIT, if that makes this any easier. Is something like this even possible? Thanks in advance.
I guess the file declares its functions as global, or it would be really easy to track what is returned.
If that's the case, you can cycle through all the global items with a generic for loop, and only take the functions from them:
allFuncs = {}
for key, item in pairs(_G) do
if type(item) == "function" then
allFuncs[#allFuncs + 1] = item
end
end
(_G is the table holding all the global variables)
Then you will have a list (allFuncs) holding all the functions declared, but be aware that it will also contain default functions like setmetatable or xpcall.
It's easy to modify the code to not make this happen, but only use this for testing / learning:
function allFuncs()
local funcsTab = {}
for key, item in pairs(_G) do
if type(item) == "function" then
funcsTab[#funcsTab + 1] = item
end
end
return funcsTab
end
defaultFuncs = allFuncs()
--then you load your file: other functions get declared
--we create another table containg the default + the new functions
myFuncs = allFuncs()
--then you subtract the first table from the second
for i = 1, #myFuncs do
for o = 1, #defaultFuncs do
if myFuncs[i] == defaultFuncs[o] then
table.remove(myFuncs, i)
end
end
end
This is if your file doesn't return anything and declares its functions as globals.
If the file declares them as local and then returns a table containing them, just use the first piece of code replacing _G with that returned table.
This is not likely to be possible without syntax or bytecode analysis as each function definition is an assignment (just has different forms in your examples). See the bytecode inspector and a related discussion here. For the syntax analysis you can use metalua or something like lua-loose-parser. Keep in mind that even those tools won't give you the entire list of functions as some functions may be defined dynamically using loadstring (or similar methods).
If you only have access to the result of loadfile, then you best bet is to use the bytecode analyzer.
This is possible using jit.attach in LuaJIT.
You can attach callbacks to a number of compiler events with
jit.attach. The callback can be called:
when a function has been compiled to bytecode ("bc");
when trace recording starts or stops ("trace");
as a trace is being recorded ("record");
or when a trace exits through a side exit ("texit").
http://wiki.luajit.org/JIT-Compiler-API#jit-attach
jit.attach(function(f)
local funcInfo = jit.util.funcinfo(f)
end, "bc")

Ada package function identifier expected

Learning Ada and trying to make a stack ADT and I'm using this webpage to figure it out.
http://www.functionx.com/ada/Lesson06.htm
eightqueens.adb
with Ada.Text_IO;
use Ada.Text_IO;
with Stack;
use Stack;
procedure EightQueens is
begin
put_line ("awd");
end EightQueens;
stack.ads
package Stack is
function awd () return Integer;
end Stack;
stack.adb
package body Stack is
function awd () return integer is
begin
return 1;
end awd;
end Stack;
Error is
stack.ads:2:19: identifier expected
I'm most certain I did everything correctly.
Ada doesn't use empty parentheses, either for defining or for calling functions or procedures.
And for future reference, the phrase "I'm most certain I did everything correctly." is a red flag indicating that you've almost certainly done something wrong.
Just to elaborate, there are some syntactic decisions that Ada made that IMHO are superior to what you may be used to from C-syntax languages.
Functions with no parameters don't use empty parenthesis in their calls. This allows you to change a contant to a function call without having to recode any of the clients.
Arrays use parentheses like function calls do, rather than some unique syntax. This allows you to change an array constant to a function call without having to recode any of the clients.
To look at it another way, a constant is just a simplified version of a parameterless function, for when you can get away with always returning the same value. Likewise, a constant array is a simplified version of a parametered function call, for when you can get away with always returning the same value. If you later discover you need a more complex implementation, that's not the client's concern, and should not affect their code.

Matlab/Octave function handlers and nargin

I am writing program in Octave and I encountered a problem, I implemented Gauss-Legandre Quadrature and I pass to my Gauss-Legandre function few arguments, and I pass the function to be intergrated in a cell cube, so I can pass few function at a time. I have this piece of code:
for weight=1:length(w)
temp=1;
for fun=1:length(c)
%liczenie iloczynu f(x_i)g(x_i), x_i - pieriwastki wielomianu Legandra
f=c{fun};
nargin(func2str(c{fun}))
if (nargin (func2str(c{fun})) == 1)
disp('a');
temp*=c{fun}((b-a)/2 * x(weight) + (a+b)/2);
else
(b-a)/2 * x(weight) + (a+b)/2;
temp*=f((b-a)/2 * x(weight) + (a+b)/2,I,points);
end
end
%mnozenie wyniku przez odpowiedni wspolczynnik - wage
temp*=w(weight);
result+=temp;
end
In cell array there are function handlers to functions which I want to integrate. Depending on number of arguments that function takes i want to use two different calls for function. If in cell array there is handler to a function that is written in .m file in the same directory as my Octave working directory everything works fine, but when i define function in Octave running time, for example:
function result=a(x)
result=x*x
end
Type
c{1}=#a
and pass this cell array to my function Kwadratury there is an error of nargin
error: nargin: invalid function
error: called from:
Why is that and how can I solve it, so I can define function not only in .m files but also in Octave.
I suspect I have a solution, but as this is Octave-specific and I'm mostly used to MATLAB, your mileage may vary.
You call the nargin function by supplying a string argument, this means that nargin will have to resolve that function and check the number of arguments. When you declare a function in-line, that function is defined within that scope (i.e. your base scope), so resolving the function name will not work from within any function (or it might resolve to a built-in function, which is even worse behavior).
The best solution is to use nargin(c{fun}) instead of nargin(func2str(c{fun})). That way you pass the actual function handle along, and there is no need to resolve the function name to the actual function, and hence no possible ambiguity.
In general I recommend against using strings to pass functions: that why function handles are included in MATLAB, so anyone reading your code (or a static code analysis tool) will be able to understand you are working with functions. When using strings, everything becomes ambiguous: does a string 'a' refer to the function a or to the first letter in the alphabet?
With regard to using inline functions, I don't know whether Octave supports this, but if you function is quite simple, it's easier to define an anonymous function, such as your example, by a = #(x)(x*x);. That is a construct that is supported by MATLAB, so that makes your code more portable to other environments (well, you'd still need to replace X *= A with X = X * A; to be MATLAB compatible).
edit:
Another possibility could be to just try out whether a form with multiple parameters works and fall back to the one parameter form when necessary:
try
(b-a)/2 * x(weight) + (a+b)/2;
temp*=f((b-a)/2 * x(weight) + (a+b)/2,I,points);
catch ME
try
disp('a');
temp*=c{fun}((b-a)/2 * x(weight) + (a+b)/2);
catch ME
end
end
You might want to check whether the returned error ME really states that a wrong number of arguments is used to allow other errors through. I do admit this is an ugly work-around, but since Octave apparently doesn't support function handles for nargin, it might be the only way you'd get what you want for inline functions.

Function definitions are not permitted in this context

Ok, I am new in Matlab and I am currently working on some econometric script. Before I move to real econometrics I have to create a function that selects the data that I'm interested in. Although I managed to get that script to work by writing at a very structural level, I would like this script to be as universal as possible and therefore would like to divide it into specific functions. However, when I converted all this to one function, I keep getting the error "Function definitions are not permitted in this context".
Thanks in advance for your help.
function [probingArray] = extractData (data, startValue, numberOfPeriods)
arrayHeight=size(data,1);
for i=1:arrayHeight
if Date(i)==startValue
datePosition=i;
end
end
n=1;
for i=(datePosition-numberOfPeriods):datePosition
probingArray(n,1)=n;
probingArray(n,2)=UK(i);
n=n+1;
end
clear n i;
make sure you respect matlab conventions
function [out1, out2, ...] = myfun(in1, in2, ...) declares the function myfun, and its inputs and outputs. The function declaration must be the first executable line of any MATLAB function.
from http://www.mathworks.com/help/techdoc/ref/function.html