Well, there is zero(..) but that is defined only for numeric types
julia> zero(Int64)
0
julia> zero(ASCIIString)
ERROR: no method convert(Type{ASCIIString}, Int64)
in zero at operators.jl:146
julia> zero(Float64)
0.0
On Thursday, 27 February 2014 06:25:39 UTC, Fil Mackay wrote:
>
> Is there an
Maybe implementing zero for strings could be a good idea... I've
implemented it for a few custom types, but theres always been a fairly
unambiguous meaning of what it means to be zero.
On Thursday, February 27, 2014 2:15:04 AM UTC-5, Avik Sengupta wrote:
>
> Well, there is zero(..) but that is d
Technically the empty string is the 1 of the string monoid. The point being
that the correct default value depends on what you're doing. If we were
going to have a default value function, it should be a different thing. I'm
not convinced that we should encourage default values, however. They strike
FWIW, we used to have this in DataArrays/DataFrames and it was pretty
unpleasant. The trouble is really that any code that calls the default()
function is broken for any type that didn’t choose to implement it. So you end
up constantly having to create the defaults yourself, while conceding that
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 2:22 AM, Stefan Karpinski wrote:
> Technically the empty string is the 1 of the string monoid. The point
> being that the correct default value depends on what you're doing. If we
> were going to have a default value function, it should be a different
> thing. I'm not convi
Why is the empty string the zero of the String type? The empty string is
the unit of the string monoid, so if anything, one(s::String) should give
the empty string. Also, how does this solve any of the problems with a
default function that John pointed out? Namely that new custom types
generally wo
On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 1:47 PM, Stefan Karpinski wrote:
> Why is the empty string the zero of the String type? The empty string is
> the unit of the string monoid, so if anything, one(s::String) should give
> the empty string.
>
Must zero(::String) != one(::String) ? :)
Not sure what else zero
Algebraically, the zero string should be such that concatenating
(multiplying) it with any string should yield the zero string. There is no
such string.
So we don't want to mess with the zero function for this purpose (compared
to that, even a default function would be better).
Why do you want t
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 12:00:29 AM UTC+11, Toivo Henningsson wrote:
>
> Algebraically, the zero string should be such that concatenating
> (multiplying) it with any string should yield the zero string. There is no
> such string.
> So we don't want to mess with the zero function for this purpo
On Saturday, March 1, 2014 5:39:27 PM UTC+11, Fil Mackay wrote:
>
> OK - I think there are cross-purposes here. What I'm talking about as
> default/zero is getting an instance of a type where the storage bits are
> all zero - there is no mathematical/algebraic/monoid angle to this. Ideally
> I'd
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