![]() ![]() You (or someone else) can also provide additional outer constructor methods at any later point, but once a type is declared, there is no way to add more inner constructor methods. If the type were declared mutable, you could reach in and directly change the field values to violate this invariant, but messing around with an object's internals uninvited is considered poor form. Now OrderedPair objects can only be constructed such that x OrderedPair(1, 2) OrderedPair(x,y) = x > y ? error("out of order") : new(x,y) One could declare it like this: julia> struct OrderedPair It has access to a special locally existent function called new that creates objects of the block's type.įor example, suppose one wants to declare a type that holds a pair of real numbers, subject to the constraint that the first number is not greater than the second one. It is declared inside the block of a type declaration, rather than outside of it like normal methods. An inner constructor method is much like an outer constructor method, with two differences: For these problems, one needs inner constructor methods. ![]() While outer constructor methods succeed in addressing the problem of providing additional convenience methods for constructing objects, they fail to address the other two use cases mentioned in the introduction of this chapter: enforcing invariants, and allowing construction of self-referential objects. Outer constructor methods can only ever create a new instance by calling another constructor method, such as the automatically provided default ones. For reasons that will become clear very shortly, additional constructor methods declared as normal methods like this are called outer constructor methods. Here the zero-argument constructor method calls the single-argument constructor method, which in turn calls the automatically provided two-argument constructor method. You could also add a zero-argument Foo constructor method that supplies default values for both of the bar and baz fields: julia> Foo() = Foo(0) For example, let's say you want to add a constructor method for Foo objects that takes only one argument and uses the given value for both the bar and baz fields. Accordingly, you can add functionality to a constructor by simply defining new methods. Outer Constructor MethodsĪ constructor is just like any other function in Julia in that its overall behavior is defined by the combined behavior of its methods. In such situations, it is generally clear from context that the term is used to mean "constructor method" rather than "constructor function", especially as it is often used in the sense of singling out a particular method of the constructor from all of the others. Nomenclature: while the term "constructor" generally refers to the entire function which constructs objects of a type, it is common to abuse terminology slightly and refer to specific constructor methods as "constructors". Julia's system for object construction addresses all of these cases and more. Sometimes, it's just convenient to be able to construct objects with fewer or different types of parameters than they have fields. Recursive data structures, especially those that may be self-referential, often cannot be constructed cleanly without first being created in an incomplete state and then altered programmatically to be made whole, as a separate step from object creation. Sometimes invariants must be enforced, either by checking arguments or by transforming them. There are, however, cases where more functionality is required when creating composite objects. For example: julia> struct Fooįor many types, forming new objects by binding their field values together is all that is ever needed to create instances. ![]() This much was already mentioned briefly when composite types were introduced. In Julia, type objects also serve as constructor functions: they create new instances of themselves when applied to an argument tuple as a function.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |