Thread overview
Templates, templates, templates...
Jan 23, 2016
Voitech
Jan 23, 2016
anonymous
Jan 24, 2016
Voitech
Jan 24, 2016
anonymous
January 23, 2016
Hi, I have a problem with creating proper inheritance chain with templates. First i will give some background about my problem.

I'm trying to create a validator for math calculation expressions. I don't want to use regexps as this is approach gives me headache and probably will not allow further extension i want. For now expressions should look like this:
1+2+3/4, -(5*(25-5)/19), sqrt(-5/-6*(212)) etc.

So each of charactes is parsed to something like PrimaryElement
class PrimaryElement {
	const dchar value;
	SymbolType symbolType;
}
SymbolsType is an enum which contains: EXPR_START,+,-,/,DIGIT,(,),.,EXPR_END

So now i want to create validator for input so user couldn't insert something like:
/00..34-+/493 but only 0.34-493. I want to divide it into phases.

First phase is SymbolType validation so it will handles problems like:
+-/345..3 but not 00000000.234+3-53

Second phase will take care about value validation so user cant insert 0000.0+3 but only 0.000+3

Third phase would be executed to check expression is completed and not allow to calculate expression for situations like 0.000+3, 3-3+4.5+ or 364/4-5.3+(

Now i'm trying to implement phase one. So i create PrimaryElementProcessor which will take some kind of rules and check PrimaryElement[] that way if divided parts of array fits into one of rules then it is valid. Rules will be trimmed to size of expression if necessary.

Model and constants declaration looks like this:


private enum ControllFlag{
	none,ommitable,repeatable
}

private enum LogicFlag{
	none,or,and
}

private class Rule(V,F){
	V value;
	F flag;
	this(){
	}

	this(V value){
		this.value=value;
	}

	this(V value,F flag){
		this.value=value;
		this.flag=flag;
	}
}
private alias ControllTemplate(T) =Rule!(T,ControllFlag);
private alias SymbolRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolType);
private alias StringRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolRule[]);
private alias LogicTemplate(T...) =Rule!(ControllTemplate(T)[],LogicFlag);
private alias LogicRule=LogicTemplate!([SymbolRule,StringRule]); <--error

So i first want to handle case like DDDDD.DDDD or DDDDDD where D is Digit

instantiation code:

SymbolRule digitRule = new SymbolRule(SymbolType.digit,ControllFlag.repeatable);
SymbolRule commaRule = new SymbolRule(SymbolType.comma);
StringRule numericRule = new StringRule([digitRule,commaRule,digitRule]);
LogicRule decimalRule = new LogicRule([digitRule,numericRule],LogicFlag.or);

error:
Error: type Rule!(Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag)[], ControllFlag) has no value

Ok so i want to hold different types in LogicRule maybe Algebraic implementation would do?

private alias ControllTemplate(T) =Rule!(T,ControllFlag);
private alias SymbolRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolType);
private alias StringRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolRule[]);
private alias LogicTemplate(T...) =Rule!(Algebraic!(ControllTemplate(T))[],LogicFlag); <--error
private alias AlgebraicLogicRule = LogicTemplate!(SymbolRule,StringRule);

error:
Error: cannot pass type (Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag), Rule!(Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag)[], ControllFlag)) as a function argument

So maybe something simpler:

private alias ControllTemplate(T) =Rule!(T,ControllFlag);
private alias SymbolRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolType);
private alias StringRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolRule[]);
private alias SimpleLogicRule =Rule!(Algebraic!(SymbolRule,StringRule)[],LogicFlag);

Compiles but... when i try to instantiate SimpleLogicRule like

SymbolRule digitRule = new SymbolRule(SymbolType.digit,ControllFlag.repeatable);
SymbolRule commaRule = new SymbolRule(SymbolType.comma);
StringRule numericRule = new StringRule([digitRule,commaRule,digitRule]);
SimpleLogicRule decimalRule = new SimpleLogicRule([digitRule,numericRule],LogicFlag.or); <--- error

i get error:
None of the overloads of '__ctor' are callable using argument types (Object[], LogicFlag), candidates are: ...

So i understand compiler can't cast/extract array of different types to known type.

I created a wrapper for this two types SymbolRule and StringRule and init it somewhere before passing to LogicRule ctor. This approach makes a lot of boilerplate code for example:

alias Wrapper = Algebraic!(SymbolRule,StringRule);
alias LogicRule =Rule!(Wrapper[],LogicFlag);

SymbolRule digitRule = new SymbolRule(SymbolType.digit,ControllFlag.repeatable);
SymbolRule commaRule = new SymbolRule(SymbolType.comma);
StringRule numericRule = new StringRule([digitRule,commaRule,digitRule]);
Wrapper digitRuleWrapper =digitRule; <-- how to ommit this ?
Wrapper numericRuleWrapper =numericRule;  <-- how to ommit this ?

LogicRule decimalRule=new LogicRule([digitRuleWrapper,numericRuleWrapper],LogicFlag.or);

Is there any nicer way to handle this case ?


Cheers Voitech.
January 23, 2016
On 23.01.2016 12:30, Voitech wrote:
> Ok so i want to hold different types in LogicRule maybe Algebraic
> implementation would do?
>
> private alias ControllTemplate(T) =Rule!(T,ControllFlag);
> private alias SymbolRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolType);
> private alias StringRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolRule[]);
> private alias LogicTemplate(T...)
> =Rule!(Algebraic!(ControllTemplate(T))[],LogicFlag); <--error

You're missing an exclamation mark there, and you've got the order of Algebraic and ControllTemplate wrong. This compiles:

private alias LogicTemplate(T...) = Rule!(ControllTemplate!(Algebraic!T)[],LogicFlag);

> private alias AlgebraicLogicRule = LogicTemplate!(SymbolRule,StringRule);
>
> error:
> Error: cannot pass type (Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag),
> Rule!(Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag)[], ControllFlag)) as a function
> argument
[...]
> Is there any nicer way to handle this case ?

Instead of Algebraic you could use a common base class, or interface, for the Rule instantiations:

abstract class RuleBase
{
    ... whatever common functionality rules have ...
}
class Rule(V,F) : RuleBase { ...}

But I have to say that I'm having trouble making sense of all that class and template complexity, and how it helps in actually validating user input.

Since this is a parsing thing, you may want to look into writing parsers an/or using a parse generator. I think Pegged is the most popular one for D. http://code.dlang.org/packages/pegged
January 24, 2016
On Saturday, 23 January 2016 at 13:19:34 UTC, anonymous wrote:
> On 23.01.2016 12:30, Voitech wrote:
>> Ok so i want to hold different types in LogicRule maybe Algebraic
>> implementation would do?
>>
>> private alias ControllTemplate(T) =Rule!(T,ControllFlag);
>> private alias SymbolRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolType);
>> private alias StringRule =ControllTemplate!(SymbolRule[]);
>> private alias LogicTemplate(T...)
>> =Rule!(Algebraic!(ControllTemplate(T))[],LogicFlag); <--error
>
> You're missing an exclamation mark there, and you've got the order of Algebraic and ControllTemplate wrong. This compiles:
>
> private alias LogicTemplate(T...) = Rule!(ControllTemplate!(Algebraic!T)[],LogicFlag);
>
>> private alias AlgebraicLogicRule = LogicTemplate!(SymbolRule,StringRule);
>>
>> error:
>> Error: cannot pass type (Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag),
>> Rule!(Rule!(SymbolType, ControllFlag)[], ControllFlag)) as a function
>> argument
> [...]
>> Is there any nicer way to handle this case ?
>
> Instead of Algebraic you could use a common base class, or interface, for the Rule instantiations:
>
> abstract class RuleBase
> {
>     ... whatever common functionality rules have ...
> }
> class Rule(V,F) : RuleBase { ...}
>
> But I have to say that I'm having trouble making sense of all that class and template complexity, and how it helps in actually validating user input.
>
> Since this is a parsing thing, you may want to look into writing parsers an/or using a parse generator. I think Pegged is the most popular one for D. http://code.dlang.org/packages/pegged

Hi, thanks for answering. The complexity is unnecessary as you said. I'm just experimenting with D language. I think i try to finish implementation in my own way and then will look how it may be done with http://code.dlang.org/packages/pegged to have a full spectrum of possibilities.

I added base class for Rule -> BaseRule. But this class is just a shell without implementation.
Is there any way to avoid this ?




January 24, 2016
On 24.01.2016 10:02, Voitech wrote:
> I added base class for Rule -> BaseRule. But this class is just a shell
> without implementation.
> Is there any way to avoid this ?

What's the problem with BaseRule not having any implementation? When the different Rule instantiations don't have any common operations that can be put there, then BaseRule's purpose is only to be a common supertype.