This package is currently abandoned, although with the new type system in Julia 0.6 it should become viable to make this package maintainable; also #23117 should help. SimpleTraits.jl package provides traits, although without the interface specification present in this package.
Traits.jl
allows to:
-
define traits/interfaces with
@traitdef
-
implement interfaces with
@traitimpl
-
make functions which dispatch on traits with
@traitfn
It's based on what I think traits should be:
-
contracts on a type or a tuple of types. The contract can contain required methods but also other assertions. (Assertions could be that certain fields are present or that it has some storage structure, etc.)
-
they needn't be declared explicitly, but can be.
-
they allow dispatch to work with them
Julia's generic functions are very good to set up contracts as mentioned in (1). But Julia does not support (2) or (3) yet. (2) is fairly easy to implement. However, dispatch on a "contract" is not easily possible, but Tim Holy recently came up with a trick. The cool thing about that trick is that the generated machine-code for a trait-dispatch function should be identical to a duck-typed function, i.e. there is no loss in performance.
Traits.jl
adds those kind of traits to Julia, using Tim's trick
combined with stagedfunctions and extensive facilities to define
traits. See also the Julia-issue
#6975 concerning
interfaces/traits.
My JuliaCon 2015 talk gives a 10 minute introduction to Traits.jl. Also, Jeff mentioned Traits.jl during Q&A in his JuliaCon talk, suggesting that trait functionality may well be added to Julia-Base (but different to Traits.jl).
Note that there is also the SimpleTraits.jl package which is a lot simpler than Traits.jl, essentially just macro-sugar for Holy-traits. Thus SimpleTraits.jl does not contain the possibility to define traits by specifying required methods. Instead types need to be added to a trait manually; the rest is almost identical to Traits.jl.
Example examples/ex1.jl
:
using Traits
# Check Cmp-trait (comparison) which is implemented in Traits.jl/src/commontraits.jl
@assert istrait(Cmp{Int,Float64}) # Int and Float64 can be compared
@assert istrait(Cmp{Int,String})==false # Int and String cannot be compared
# make a new trait and add a type to it:
@traitdef MyTr{X,Y} begin
foobar(X,Y) -> Bool # All type-tuples for which there is a method foo
# with that signature belong to MyTr
end
type A
a::Int
end
@assert istrait(MyTr{A,A})==false # foobar not implement yet
foobar(a::A, b::A) = a.a==b.a # implement it
@assert istrait(MyTr{A,A}) # voila!
@assert istrait(MyTr{Int,Int})==false
# make a function which dispatches on traits:
@traitfn ft1{X,Y; Cmp{X,Y}}(x::X,y::Y) = x>y ? 5 : 6
@traitfn ft1{X,Y; MyTr{X,Y}}(x::X,y::Y) = foobar(x,y) ? -99 : -999
ft1(4,5) # ==6 i.e. dispatches to first definition
ft1(A(5), A(6)) # ==-999 i.e. dispatches to second definition
ft1("asdf", 6)
# -> ERROR: TraitException("No matching trait found for function ft1")
New features are documented in NEWS as they are added. I keep some notes, musings and plans in dev_notes.md.
This is a fairly experimental package and I will not try to keep backwards compatibility as I move on. Please try it out and give me feedback, issues or pull requests!
Update April 2016: I will not have much time to work on this in the near-ish future and it will be a low priority for me to update Traits.jl once Julia 0.5 is out.
The source of below examples is in examples/ex2.jl
. Most of the
important functions are documented and will respond to ?
in the REPL.
Trait definition (for details see traitdef.md):
using Traits
# simple
@traitdef Tr1{X} begin
fun1(X) -> Number # this means a method with signature fun1(::X)
# returning a Number
end
@traitdef Tr2{X,Y} begin
fun2(X,Y) -> Number
end
# subtrait
@traitdef Tr3{X,Y} <: Tr1{X}, Tr2{X,Y} begin
fun3(X,Y,Int)
end
# with additional constraint on the types
@traitdef Tr4{X,Y} begin
fun4(X,Y)
@constraints begin
# both Types need to start with the same letter:
string(X.name)[1]==string(Y.name)[1]
end
end
# using associated types
@traitdef Tr5{X,Y} begin
Z = promote_type(X,Y) # calculates Z from X and Y
fun5(X,Y) -> Z
end
Note that return-type checking is quite experimental. It can be
turned off with check_return_types(false)
.
Trait implementation and checking with istrait
:
# manual definiton, i.e. just define the functions
fun1(x::Int) = 5x
@assert istrait(Tr1{Int})
# using @traitimpl
@traitimpl Tr1{Float64} begin
fun1(x::Float64) = 7x # the explicit "::Float64" is needed at the moment
end
@assert istrait(Tr1{Float64})
# wrong usage of @traitimpl
try
@traitimpl Tr1{Float32} begin
fun1(x::Float64) = 7x # if the explicit type is wrong, it may error
end
catch e
println(e)
end
# This gives an error because supertypes have not been defined yet:
try
eval(:(
@traitimpl Tr3{Int, Int} begin
fun3(x::Int, y::Int, t::Int) = x+y+t
end))
catch e
println(e)
end
# this works:
@traitimpl Tr2{Int, Int} begin
fun2(x::Int, y::Int) = x+y
end
@traitimpl Tr3{Int, Int} begin
fun3(x::Int, y::Int, t::Int) = x+y+t
end
@traitimpl Tr4{Int, Int} begin
fun4(x::Int, y::Int) = x+y
end
# This gives an error because constraints are not satisfied:
# Int starts with an "I" whereas Float64 with an "F":
try
eval(:(
@traitimpl Tr4{Int, Float64} begin
fun4(x::Int, y::Float64) = x+y
end))
catch e
println(e) # ErrorException("assertion failed: istrait(Tr4{Int,Float64})")
end
Trait functions & dispatch (for details see traitfns.md):
@traitfn tf1{X, Y; Tr1{X}, Tr1{Y}}(a::X, b::Y) = fun1(a) + fun1(b) # I
@traitfn tf1{X, Y; Tr1{X}, Tr1{Y}}(a::X, b::Y, c::Int) = fun1(a) + fun1(b) + c # II
@traitfn tf1{X, Y; Tr2{X,Y}}(a::X, b::Y) = fun2(a,b) # III
# Note that all the type-parameters are in the {} and that all
# arguments need a type parameter (a limitation of the
# macro-parser). This doesn't work:
#
# julia> @traitfn ttt1{X, Y; Tr1{X}, Tr1{Y}}(a::X, b::Y, c) = fun1(a) + fun1(b) + c
# ERROR: type Symbol has no field args
#
# But this works:
#
# julia> @traitfn ttt1{X, Y, Z; Tr1{X}, Tr1{Y}}(a::X, b::Y, c::Z) = fun1(a) + fun1(b) + c
# ttt1 (generic function with 6 methods)
# tf1 now dispatches on traits
@assert tf1(5.,6.)==77. # -> 77 ; dispatches to I because istrait(Tr1{Float64})
# but not istrait(Tr2{Float64,Float64})
@assert tf1(5.,6.,77)==154. # -> 154. ; dispatches to II because of the extra argument
# Errors because of dispatch ambiguity:
try
tf1(5,6) # istrait(Tr1{Int}) and istrait(Tr2{Int,Int}) are both true!
catch e
println(e)
end
# Implementing Tr1 for a type will make it work with tf1:
type MyType
a::Int
end
try
tf1(MyType(8), 9) # not implemented yet
catch e
println(e)
end
@traitimpl Tr1{MyType} begin
fun1(x::MyType) = x.a+9
end
@assert tf1(MyType(8), 9)==62 # -> 62 ; dispatches to I
Continuing the example from last section, let's have a look at the llvm code:
f(x,y) = 7x + 7y
@code_llvm f(5.,6.)
@code_llvm tf1(5.,6.)
both produces
define double @"julia_f;41342"(double, double) {
top:
%2 = fmul double %0, 7.000000e+00, !dbg !1388
%3 = fmul double %1, 7.000000e+00, !dbg !1388
%4 = fadd double %2, %3, !dbg !1388
ret double %4, !dbg !1388
}
However, for more complicated functions code is not quite the same,
see test/perf/perf.jl
.
Julia is already good at specifying function-interfaces for
types/families of types with its ability of multiple dispatch.
However, for a particular type these function-interfaces are
implicitly defined by defining the particular functions needed for
that "interface". For example, to support iteration a type needs to
implement the functions start
, next
, and done
with a specific
calling convention. What Julia is lacking is a way to formally
define and implement an interface, and, probably more importantly,
to dispatch on interfaces. This package implements both of these
abilities.
Probably easiest to figure out what Traits.jl is doing with its
macros, is to have a look at the files tests/manual-trait*.jl
. There
I manually coded what the macros do.
In Julia dispatch works on types, to extend this to traits I use
@timholy's trick.
His trick uses a method to assign its arguments to a trait. That trait-function is then used
for dispatch in another function. Example of Tim's trick (examples/ex_tims_traits.jl
):
type Trait1 end
type Trait2 end
type Trait3 end
# Now define function f which should dispatch on those traits:
f(x,y) = _f(x,y, traitfn(x,y))
# Logic which dispatches on trait:
_f(x,y,::Type{Trait1}) = x+y
_f(x,y,::Type{Trait2}) = x-y
_f(x,y,::Type{Trait3}) = x*y
# Association of types with traits through method definitions:
# Throw error as default
traitfn{T,S}(x::T,y::S) = error("Function f not implemented for type ($T,$S)")
# Add types-tuples to Trait1, Trait2 or Trait3
traitfn(::Int, ::Int) = Trait1
traitfn(::Int, ::FloatingPoint) = Trait2
traitfn(::FloatingPoint, ::FloatingPoint) = Trait3
# use
@assert f(3,4)==7 # Trait1
@assert f(3,4.)==-1.0 # Trait2
@assert f(3.,4.)==12.0 # Trait3
# add another type-tuple to Trait3
traitfn(::String, ::String) = Trait3
@assert f("Lorem ", "Ipsum")=="Lorem Ipsum"
What does this add compared to what we had before with usual dispatch?
When a new type, say A
, is created it can made to work with the
function f
without needing to re-define f
for that particular
type. Instead all that is needed is to add it to the traitfn
, and
choosing the exact behavior of f
by the type traitfn
returns:
traitfn(::A, ::Int) = Trait1()
traitfn(::Int, ::A) = Trait1()
Therefore traitfn
is in effect a function that groups type-tuples
into different Traits (via method definitions) and returns the
appropriate type when called (which is then used inside f
for
dispatch). However, the limitation of this approach is that traitfn
is married to f
as can be seen from trying to reuse it for another
function g
which wants to dispatch in different traits:
g(x,y) = _g(x,y, traitfn(x,y))
# Logic which dispatches on trait:
_g(x,y,::Type{Trait1}) = 2x+2y
_g(x,y,::Type{Trait4}) = 2x-2y # g doesn't care about Trait2&3 but about 4
# However, say Trait4 should also be implemented by {Int, FloatingPoint} just
# like Trait2:
traitfn(::Int, ::FloatingPoint) = Trait4 # this will overwrite the
# Trait2 definition above!
g(5, 6.) # doesn't work
This limitation can be overcome having a different traitfn
for each
function which uses trait dispatch. However, it becomes rather tricky
to remember to update all different traitfn
s if a type-tuple is
added to a certain trait! This problem is solved in Traits.jl by
de-coupling the trait definition from the trait dispatch helper
function, both of which was done above by the traitfn
.
Whether a trait is defined is checked by the istrait
function
(completely independent of any functions doing trait-dispatch). For
instance istrait(Tr1{Int,Float64})
will check whether Tr1
is
implemented by Tuple{Int,Float64}
.
For the trait dispatch of a function, say f1
, a generated-method is
used (which also belongs to the generic function f1
, so I needn't
worry about scopes). The first time the generated method is called
with arguments of a specific type, it figures out which trait or
traits-tuple featuring in the method definitions of f1
that type
satisfies, and constructs a constant method returning that trait.
This trait is then used for dispatch. Time for an example!
For methods definition like so
@traitfn f1{X,Y<:Integer; D1{Y}, D4{X,Y}}(x::X,y::Y) = x + sin(y)
@traitfn f1{S,T<:Integer; D1{S}, D1{T} }(s::S,t::T) = sin(s) - sin(t)
@traitfn f1{X,Y<:FloatingPoint; D1{X}, D1{Y} }(x::X,y::Y) = cos(x) - cos(y)
the underlying definitions are:
f1{X,Y<:Integer}(x::X, y::Y) = f1(f1(_TraitDispatch,x, y), x, y)
f1{S,T<:Integer}(s::S, t::T) = f1(f1(_TraitDispatch,s, t), s, t)
f1{X,Y<:FloatingPoint}(x::X, y::Y) = f1(f1(_TraitDispatch,x, y), x, y)
# The logic for different traits is:
@inline f1{X,Y<:Integer}(::Type{(D1{Y}, D4{X,Y})}, x::X, y::Y) = x + sin(y)
@inline f1{S,T<:Integer}(::Type{(D1{S}, D1{T})}, s::S, t::T) = sin(s) - sin(t)
@inline f1{X,Y<:FloatingPoint}(::Type{(D1{X}, D1{Y})}, x::X, y::Y) = cos(x) - cos(y)
# Trait dispatch happens in these generated functions
@generated function f1{X1,X2<:Integer}(::Type{_TraitDispatch}, x1::X1, x2::X2)
# Figure out which trait matches. Note below list is updated as more
# trait-dispatched methods are added to f1.
traittypes = [(D1{X2}, D4{X1,X2}), (D1{X1}, D1{X2})]
# errors if not a single match is found:
traittyp = Traits.traitdispatch(traittypes, $(fn.name))
out = :(())
for s in traittyp
push!(out.args, :($s))
end
return out
end
# For each type signature there is a trait-dispatch function
@generated function f1{X1,X2<:FloatingPoint}(::Type{_TraitDispatch}, x1::X1, x2::X2)
...
end
Dispatch, happening in the function Traits.traitdispatch
is quite
simple taking trait-hierarchies into account. Although, note that it
is easily possible to have unsolvable ambiguities with trait-dispatch
as traits do not have a strict hierarchy like types.
See the Julia-issue #6975 for a discussion about interfaces/traits.
My simpler traits implementation: SimpleTraits.jl Similar to Traits.jl but:
- types are added to traits manually
- some restrictions on
@traitfn
@Rory-Finnegan's Interfaces.jl
- does dispatch on traits
- only single parameter traits
- uses a new type of mutable
Union
coded in C
Jason Morton's package Typeclass.jl
- does multiple parameters
- no dispatch
@pao's https://gist.github.com/pao/2432554
- simple
- no dispatch on trait
JuliaLang/julia#7025 (and https://gist.github.com/tknopp/ed53dc22b61062a2b283)
- @tknopp
- interfaces are just added to types
- no dispatch on interfaces
https://gist.github.com/abe-egnor/503661eb4cc0d66b4489
- @abe-egnor
- no dispatch
https://github.com/abeschneider/TypeTraits.jl
- only does fields of types, as far as I can tell
Graphs.jl: http://graphsjl-docs.readthedocs.org/en/latest/interface.html
- interface verification
@timholy's trick JuliaLang/julia#2345 (comment)
- does limited dispatch: a function returns a true/false type depending on the input types
- Jeff suggested some additions to it.