Is there any way to "force" a function parameter to follow some rule in C++ ?
For the sake of example, let say I want to write a function which computes the n'th derivative of a mathematical function. Let suppose the signature of the function is this one :
double computeNthDerivative(double x, unsigned int n);
Now, let say I want to forbid users to input 0 for n. I could just use an assert or test the value and throw an exception if the user input is 0.
But is there any other way of doing this kind of stuff ?
Edit : Conditions would be set at compile time, but the check must be done at the run-time.
You can prevent the use of 0 at compile time, using templates.
template <int N>
double computeNthDerivative(double x)
{
// Disallow its usage for 0 by using static_assert.
static_assert(N != 0, "Using 0 is not allowed");
// Implement the logic for non-zero N
}
To prevent the use of the function for 0 at run time, it's best to throw an exception.
double computeNthDerivative(double x, unsinged int n)
{
if ( n == 0 )
{
throw std::out_of_range("Use of the function for n = 0 is not allowed.");
}
// Implement the logic for non-zero n
}
class Policy {
private:
String myPolicy;
public :
Policy(String regEx) : myPolicy(regEx) {
}
void verify(int n) {
regEx strtok , sprintf, blah, blah n
};
class Asserted {
private:
Policy policy;
public:
Asserted(Policy policy, int n) throw AAAHHHHH {
policy.verify(n);
}
};
Then finally
Asserted assert = new Asserted(Policy("[1-9]", 8))
double computeNthDerivative(2.6, assert);
I think the best way here is to throw an exception. This is what exceptions are for, even the name seems to suggest this.
As to the assert macro, there is one important caveat. If you use the assert macro, the program will abort if the assertion is not met. However, if you ever make a release build where the NDEBUG macro is set, all assertions will be removed during compilation. This means that you cannot check for valid user input with this macro (because you should build a release build).
The only rules are that you give in. If users are the ones that you want to restrict, you have to check what they give in.
Same goes for the functions, however in your case what you showed as an example it is better to check the variable after the cin (or whatever imput you prefer) rather than checking it in the function itself. For this i would just go
if n!=0;
your function
else break;
So if you are looking for a "Policy" based solution you could create a separate class which accepts a defining regular expression (or whatever you define as a policy) and the input, in this case n, which would then be used as the input to your function.
Related
I wrote a function that requires two parameters, but I don't want those two parameters to be 0.
I want to make the compiler know that those two parameters cannot be 0 through some ways, otherwise the editor will report an error in the form of "red wavy line".
I refer to "custom exception class" to solve this problem, but I find this method does not work.
If there are someone knows how to do , I will be very happy, because it takes me a whole day
For example:
#include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int Fuction(int i , int j){
//code
}
int main(){
Funciton(1,1);
Funciton(0,0);
//I don't want i or j is zero
//But if they are still zero , The program will still work normally
return 0;
}
There is no integer type without a 0. However, you can provoke a compiler error by introducing a conversion to a pointer type. Its a bit hacky, but achieves what you want (I think) for a literal 0:
#include <iostream>
struct from_int {
int value;
from_int(int value) : value(value) {}
};
struct non_zero {
int value;
non_zero(int*) = delete;
non_zero(from_int f) : value(f.value) {}
};
void bar(non_zero n) {
int i = n.value; // cannot be 0
}
int main() {
bar(non_zero(42));
//bar(non_zero(0)); // compiler error
}
bar is the function that cannot be called with a 0 parameter. 0 can be converted to a pointer but that constructor has no definition. Any other int will pick the other constructor. Though it requires the caller to explicitly construct a non_zero because only one user defined conversion is taken into account.
Note that this only works for a literal 0. There is no error when you pass a 0 to this function:
void moo(int x){
bar(non_zero(x));
}
Thats why it should be considered as a hack. Though, in general it is not possible to trigger a compiler error based on the value of x which is only known at runtime.
If you want to throw an exception, thats a whole different story. You'd simply add a check in the function:
if (i == 0) throw my_custom_exception{"some error message"};
If you are using only MSVC you can also take a look at Structured Annotation Language (SAL). It is described on MSDN.
For your case you might be interested in _In_range_(lb,ub). An example would be:
void f(_In_range_(1,300) int a, _In_range_(1, 2147483647) int b);
Please note that this will not prohibit calling f(0, 0) but code analysis will trigger a warning. That warning will be triggered also in cases where you call f(x,x) and the compiler knows that x is zero.
In the past I liked to use SAL as it makes the interface clearer and can help reveal errors because the compiler can check more semantics. But now with modern C++ und the CppCoreGuidelines I am trying to follow the guidelines and so normally I don't need SAL anymore.
I have a function that returns a custom class structure, but how should I handle the cases where I wish to inform the user that the function has failed, as in return false.
My function looks something like this:
Cell CSV::Find(std::string segment) {
Cell result;
// Search code here.
return result;
}
So when succesful, it returns the proper result, but how should I handle the case when it could fail?
I thought about adding a boolean method inside Cell to check what ever Cell.data is empty or not (Cell.IsEmpty()). But am I thinking this issue in a way too complicated way?
There are three general approaches:
Use exceptions. This is what's in Bathsheba's answer.
Return std::optional<Cell> (or some other type which may or may not hold an actual Cell).
Return bool, and add a Cell & parameter.
Which of these is best depends on how you intend this function to be used. If the primary use case is passing a valid segment, then by all means use exceptions.
If part of the design of this function is that it can be used to tell if a segment is valid, exceptions aren't appropriate, and my preferred choice would be std::optional<Cell>. This may not be available on your standard library implementation yet (it's a C++17 feature); if not, boost::optional<Cell> may be useful (as mentioned in Richard Hodges's answer).
In the comments, instead of std::optional<Cell>, user You suggested expected<Cell, error> (not standard C++, but proposed for a future standard, and implementable outside of the std namespace until then). This may be a good option to add some indication on why no Cell could be found for the segment parameter passed in, if there are multiple possible reasons.
The third option I include mainly for completeness. I do not recommend it. It's a popular and generally good pattern in other languages.
Is this function a query, which could validly not find the cell, or is it an imperative, where the cell is expected to be found?
If the former, return an optional (or nullable pointer to) the cell.
If the latter, throw an exception if not found.
Former:
boost::optional<Cell> CSV::Find(std::string segment) {
boost::optional<Cell> result;
// Search code here.
return result;
}
Latter:
as you have it.
And of course there is the c++17 variant-based approach:
#include <variant>
#include <string>
struct CellNotFound {};
struct Cell {};
using CellFindResult = std::variant<CellNotFound, Cell>;
CellFindResult Find(std::string segment) {
CellFindResult result { CellNotFound {} };
// Search code here.
return result;
}
template<class... Ts> struct overloaded : Ts... { using Ts::operator()...; };
template<class... Ts> overloaded(Ts...) -> overloaded<Ts...>;
void cellsAndStuff()
{
std::visit(overloaded
{
[&](CellNotFound)
{
// the not-found code
},
[&](Cell c)
{
// code on cell found
}
}, Find("foo"));
}
The C++ way of dealing with abject failures is to define an exception class of the form:
struct CSVException : std::exception{};
In your function you then throw one of those in the failure branch:
Cell CSV::Find(std::string segment) {
Cell result;
// Search code here.
if (fail) throw CSVException();
return result;
}
You then handle the fail case with a try catch block at the calling site.
If however the "fail" branch is normal behaviour (subjective indeed but only you can be the judge of normality), then do indeed imbue some kind of failure indicator inside Cell, or perhaps even change the return type to std::optional<Cell>.
If you can use C++17, another approach would be to use an std::optional type as your return value. That's a wrapper that may or may not contain a value. The caller can then check whether your function actually returned a value and handle the case where it didn't.
std::optional<Cell> CSV::Find(std::string segment) {
Cell result;
// Search code here.
return result;
}
void clientCode() {
auto cell = CSV::Find("foo");
if (cell)
// do stuff when found
else
// handle not found
}
A further option is using multiple return values:
std::pair<Cell, bool> CSV::Find(std::string segment) {
Cell result;
// Search code here.
return {result, found};
}
// ...
auto cell = CSV::Find("foo");
if (cell->second)
// do stuff with cell->first
The boolean flag says whether the requested Cell was found or not.
PROs
well known approach (e.g. std::map::insert);
quite direct: value and success indicator are return values of the function.
CONs
obscureness of first and second which requires to always remember the relative positions of values within the pairs. C++17 structured bindings / if statement with initializer partially resolve this issue:
if (auto [result, found] = CSV::Find("foo"); found)
// do stuff with `result`
possible loss of safety (the calling code has to check if there is a result value, before using it).
Details
Returning multiple values from functions in C++
C++ Error Handling - downside of using std::pair or std::tuple for returning error codes and function returns
For parsing, it is generally better to avoid std::string and instead use std::string_view; if C++17 is not available, minimally functional versions can be whipped up easily enough.
Furthermore, it is also important to track not only what was parsed but also the remainder.
There are two possibilities to track the remainder:
taking a mutable argument (by reference),
returning the remainder.
I personally prefer the latter, as in case of errors it guarantees that the caller has in its hands a unmodified value which is useful for error-reporting.
Then, you need to examine what potential errors can occur, and what recovery mechanisms you wish for. This will inform the design.
For example, if you wish to be able to parse ill-formed CSV documents, then it is reasonable that Cell be able to represent ill-formed CSV cells, in which case the interface is rather simple:
std::pair<Cell, std::string_view> consume_cell(std::string_view input) noexcept;
Where the function always advances and the Cell may contain either a proper cell, or an ill-formed one.
On the other hand, if you only wish to support well-formed CSV documents, then it is reasonable to signal errors via exceptions and that Cell only be able to hold actual cells:
std::pair<std::optional<Cell>, std::string_view> consume_cell(...);
And finally, you need to think about how to signal end of row conditions. It may a simple marker on Cell, though at this point I personally prefer to create an iterator as it presents a more natural interface since a row is a range of Cell.
The C++ interface for iterators is a bit clunky (as you need an "end", and the end is unknown before parsing), however I recommend sticking to it to be able to use the iterator with for loops. If you wish to depart from it, though, at least make it work easily with while, such as std::optional<Cell> cell; while ((cell = row.next())) { ... }.
What's the best way if I want to make sure that every parameter that's passed to the setX() method is a positive number?
For example:
a.setX(32); // I don't need to worry about if 32 is less than 0
if(a.getY()-64 > 0)
{
b.setX(a.getY()-64); // But I have to check if a variable will be less than 0
}
Can I make a few changes in the setX() method by adding an if statement there? But modifying a function in a third-party library is not a good idea, is it? Is there a way to achieve this without touching the library?
Of course I can manually make sure that the argument is a positive value every time I call this function. But this sounds even worse. I'll probably call this function very frequently and I can't just do something to check the value every time before I call this function. What's the best way then?
Why don't you simply create your own function and make sure you only call this one and never the original one:
inline void MySetX( TheClass& a, int value )
{
if ( value >= 0 )
{
a.setX( value );
}
else
{
// Do your error handling, throw exception, assert, or whatever
}
}
Then, replace all your a.setX( i ) by MySetX( a, i )
For example:
void Date::month(unsigned int inMonth) {
assert(inMonth <= 12);
_month = inMonth;
}
If this is not good practice, what is the correct way to go about this?
You shouldn't use assert to ensure that an argument to a public member function is valid. The reason is that there's no way for clients of your class to react to a failed assertion in any meaningful way (the fact that asserts are removed from release builds does not help either).
As a rule of thumb, assert should only be used for things that are strictly under your control (e.g., an argument of a private method).
In this case you're better off throwing a std::invalid_argument exception:
void Date::month(unsigned int month)
{
if(month == 0 || month > 12)
{
throw std::invalid_argument("a month must be in the [1-12] range");
}
_month = month;
}
Yes it is.
This is the right way.
Although I would call it setMonth() rather than month()
Also bare in mind that assert() is preprocessed into nothing in release builds. so if you want something that also works in release then either write your own assert or do a proper run-time check.
Another way that also gives the code more readability would be defining an enumerated type for month:
enum e_Month {
e_Month_January,
e_Month_February,
e_Month_March,
// etc..
e_Month_December
};
Now your assignment becomes:
void Date::month(e_Month inMonth) { _month = inMonth; }
Most compilers will cause an error for assigning another type to enum so you get compile time safety that it will always be in range.
That's fine, you can assert whenever it's unexpected input in your application.
In addition throw an exception something like ArgumentException in addition since you don't want to set an invalid month value.
I have a setup that looks like this.
class Checker
{ // member data
Results m_results; // see below
public:
bool Check();
private:
bool Check1();
bool Check2();
// .. so on
};
Checker is a class that performs lengthy check computations for engineering analysis. Each type of check has a resultant double that the checker stores. (see below)
bool Checker::Check()
{ // initilisations etc.
Check1();
Check2();
// ... so on
}
A typical Check function would look like this:
bool Checker::Check1()
{ double result;
// lots of code
m_results.SetCheck1Result(result);
}
And the results class looks something like this:
class Results
{ double m_check1Result;
double m_check2Result;
// ...
public:
void SetCheck1Result(double d);
double GetOverallResult()
{ return max(m_check1Result, m_check2Result, ...); }
};
Note: all code is oversimplified.
The Checker and Result classes were initially written to perform all checks and return an overall double result. There is now a new requirement where I only need to know if any of the results exceeds 1. If it does, subsequent checks need not be carried out(it's an optimisation). To achieve this, I could either:
Modify every CheckN function to keep check for result and return. The parent Check function would keep checking m_results. OR
In the Results::SetCheckNResults(), throw an exception if the value exceeds 1 and catch it at the end of Checker::Check().
The first is tedious, error prone and sub-optimal because every CheckN function further branches out into sub-checks etc.
The second is non-intrusive and quick. One disadvantage is I can think of is that the Checker code may not necessarily be exception-safe(although there is no other exception being thrown anywhere else). Is there anything else that's obvious that I'm overlooking? What about the cost of throwing exceptions and stack unwinding?
Is there a better 3rd option?
I don't think this is a good idea. Exceptions should be limited to, well, exceptional situations. Yours is a question of normal control flow.
It seems you could very well move all the redundant code dealing with the result out of the checks and into the calling function. The resulting code would be cleaner and probably much easier to understand than non-exceptional exceptions.
Change your CheckX() functions to return the double they produce and leave dealing with the result to the caller. The caller can more easily do this in a way that doesn't involve redundancy.
If you want to be really fancy, put those functions into an array of function pointers and iterate over that. Then the code for dealing with the results would all be in a loop. Something like:
bool Checker::Check()
{
for( std::size_t id=0; idx<sizeof(check_tbl)/sizeof(check_tbl[0]); ++idx ) {
double result = check_tbl[idx]();
if( result > 1 )
return false; // or whichever way your logic is (an enum might be better)
}
return true;
}
Edit: I had overlooked that you need to call any of N SetCheckResultX() functions, too, which would be impossible to incorporate into my sample code. So either you can shoehorn this into an array, too, (change them to SetCheckResult(std::size_t idx, double result)) or you would have to have two function pointers in each table entry:
struct check_tbl_entry {
check_fnc_t checker;
set_result_fnc_t setter;
};
check_tbl_entry check_tbl[] = { { &Checker::Check1, &Checker::SetCheck1Result }
, { &Checker::Check2, &Checker::SetCheck2Result }
// ...
};
bool Checker::Check()
{
for( std::size_t id=0; idx<sizeof(check_tbl)/sizeof(check_tbl[0]); ++idx ) {
double result = check_tbl[idx].checker();
check_tbl[idx].setter(result);
if( result > 1 )
return false; // or whichever way your logic is (an enum might be better)
}
return true;
}
(And, no, I'm not going to attempt to write down the correct syntax for a member function pointer's type. I've always had to look this up and still never ot this right the first time... But I know it's doable.)
Exceptions are meant for cases that shouldn't happen during normal operation. They're hardly non-intrusive; their very nature involves unwinding the call stack, calling destructors all over the place, yanking the control to a whole other section of code, etc. That stuff can be expensive, depending on how much of it you end up doing.
Even if it were free, though, using exceptions as a normal flow control mechanism is a bad idea for one other, very big reason: exceptions aren't meant to be used that way, so people don't use them that way, so they'll be looking at your code and scratching their heads trying to figure out why you're throwing what looks to them like an error. Head-scratching usually means you're doing something more "clever" than you should be.