equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

I recently found myself explaining to a friend how Ruby's various
comparison operators work. In the process, I tried to find some decent
documentation on why Ruby has so many different ways to test for
equality, how they differ and how they should be implemented and used.

I was unable to find any such documentation, so I decided to have a go
myself :-) You can see the fruits of my labours here:

http://www.texperts.com/2007/10/16/n...equality-maze/

I believe that it's an accurate reflection of both how things work and
the philosophy underlying the design of this area. I would be very
grateful if you could let me know if I have anything wrong or have left
anything out though!

There are a number of subtle pitfalls in this area waiting to trap the
unwary. I hope that this may go some way to helping a few people avoid
them :-)

Comments, criticisms and suggestions all gratefully received.

Paul.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On 10/16/07, Paul Butcher <paul@texperts.com> wrote:
> I recently found myself explaining to a friend how Ruby's various
> comparison operators work. In the process, I tried to find some decent
> documentation on why Ruby has so many different ways to test for
> equality, how they differ and how they should be implemented and used.
>
> I was unable to find any such documentation, so I decided to have a go
> myself :-) You can see the fruits of my labours here:
>
> http://www.texperts.com/2007/10/16/n...equality-maze/
>
> I believe that it's an accurate reflection of both how things work and
> the philosophy underlying the design of this area. I would be very
> grateful if you could let me know if I have anything wrong or have left
> anything out though!
>
> There are a number of subtle pitfalls in this area waiting to trap the
> unwary. I hope that this may go some way to helping a few people avoid
> them :-)
>
> Comments, criticisms and suggestions all gratefully received.

Thanks for this. I found it great for a quick reference and to explain
it to someone else :-).

There are a couple of typos that you might want to correct:

Note that this means that, unlike the other methods we're considering
here, this means that === won't in general be commutative:

String === 'foo'
=> true
'foo' == String
=> false


Should be 'foo' === String (three equals).

[...]
In the vast majority of cases, you will either want to test for
"natural" equality (===)

Should be (==).

Thanks,

Jesus.

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

Jesús Gabriel y Galán wrote:
> Thanks for this. I found it great for a quick reference and to explain
> it to someone else :-).

Thanks Jesús - glad to know that it was of some use!

> There are a couple of typos that you might want to correct:

Thanks. These are now fixed!

Paul.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

Paul Butcher wrote:
> I was unable to find any such documentation, so I decided to have a go
> myself :-) You can see the fruits of my labours here:
>
> http://www.texperts.com/2007/10/16/n...equality-maze/

Nobody has (yet) risen to the challenge at the end of my article, so I
thought that I'd ask here :-)

Just about every class in the standard library implements == and eql? as
I describe in the article, i.e. eql? tests for equal values and == tests
for "natural" equality (which normally means equal values).

For example:

[1, 2].eql? [1,2]
=> true
'foo'.eql? 'foo'
=> true
[1, 2] == [1,2]
=> true
'foo' == 'foo'
=> true

Hash, however, is an exception. Hash#== tests for equal values.
Hash.eql?, however, tests for object identity:

{:x=>1, :y=>2} == {:x=>1, :y=>2}
=> true
{:x=>1, :y=>2}.eql?({:x=>1, :y=>2})
=> false

Why is hash the odd one out? I'm sure that there must be a good reason
(Matz?) but I can't at the moment work out what it might be.

I'd be very grateful for any light anyone could cast on this. Thanks!

Paul.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On 10/17/07, Paul Butcher <paul@texperts.com> wrote:

> Nobody has (yet) risen to the challenge at the end of my article, so I
> thought that I'd ask here :-)
>
> Just about every class in the standard library implements == and eql? as
> I describe in the article, i.e. eql? tests for equal values and == tests
> for "natural" equality (which normally means equal values).
...
>
> Hash, however, is an exception. Hash#== tests for equal values.
> Hash.eql?, however, tests for object identity:
...
> Why is hash the odd one out? I'm sure that there must be a good reason
> (Matz?) but I can't at the moment work out what it might be.
>
> I'd be very grateful for any light anyone could cast on this. Thanks!

Some clues:
irb(main):001:0> h1 = {:a => "1", :b => "2"}
=> {:b=>"2", :a=>"1"}
irb(main):002:0> h2 = {:a => "1", :b => "2"}
=> {:b=>"2", :a=>"1"}
irb(main):003:0> h1 == h2
=> true
irb(main):004:0> h1.eql? h2
=> false
irb(main):005:0> h1.hash
=> 19850
irb(main):006:0> h2.hash
=> 276530
irb(main):007:0> h1.object_id
=> 19850
irb(main):008:0> h2.object_id
=> 276530

I think the reason is twofold:

1) Using hashs as keys in another hash is not a common use case. I'm a
little hard-pressed to think of why I'd want to, although I'm famous
for lack of imagination.
2) Because of the requirement that obj1.eql? obj2 => obj1.hash ==
obj2.hash, implementing Hash#hash requires iterating over the keys and
values and would be fairly expensive and make accessing a hash with
hash keys by key impractical.


--
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 09:12:26PM +0900, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>
> 1) Using hashs as keys in another hash is not a common use case. I'm a
> little hard-pressed to think of why I'd want to, although I'm famous
> for lack of imagination.
> 2) Because of the requirement that obj1.eql? obj2 => obj1.hash ==
> obj2.hash, implementing Hash#hash requires iterating over the keys and
> values and would be fairly expensive and make accessing a hash with
> hash keys by key impractical.

foo.eql? still seems a little inconsistent (and surprising) to me.
Essentially, it's == except when comparing hashes, at which point it
suddenly becomes foo.equal?. Is there some instance in which foo.eql?
and foo.equal? evaluate differently for hashes that escapes me at the
moment? Is there a particular use-case for foo.eql? (which for the
moment looks to me like the red-headed stepchild of Ruby equality) that
isn't satisfied by any of the other equality comparison methods?

While we're discussing things with equal signs -- why isn't = a method?

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On Oct 17, 6:12 am, "Rick DeNatale" <rick.denat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/17/07, Paul Butcher <p...@texperts.com> wrote:
> > Just about every class in the standard library implements == and eql? as
> > I describe in the article, i.e. eql? tests for equal values and == tests
> > for "natural" equality (which normally means equal values).
>
> > Hash, however, is an exception. Hash#== tests for equal values.
> > Hash.eql?, however, tests for object identity:
>
> > Why is hash the odd one out? I'm sure that there must be a good reason
> > (Matz?) but I can't at the moment work out what it might be.
>
> I think the reason is twofold:
>
> 1) Using hashs as keys in another hash is not a common use case. I'm a
> little hard-pressed to think of why I'd want to, although I'm famous
> for lack of imagination.

I've wanted it on 3 occasions (that I can remember) now. Here's a
contrived example derived from the real-world use case I can no longer
remember:

You have a file like this...
alpha,beta,15
gamma,delta,3
beta,alpha,4
alpha,alpha,3
delta,alpha,5
gamma,delta,7
....and you want to sum up the numbers for each unique pair of greek
letters. Naively, I'd do (and initially tried) something like:

sums = Hash.new{ 0 }
DATA.each{ |line|
_, g1, g2, num = /(\w+),(\w+),(\d+)/.match( line ).to_a
sums[ { g1=>true, g2=>true } ] += num.to_i
}

I believe I instead resorted to sorting the keys and using a nested
hash to drill down to the value. It was annoying.

> 2) Because of the requirement that obj1.eql? obj2 => obj1.hash ==
> obj2.hash, implementing Hash#hash requires iterating over the keys and
> values and would be fairly expensive and make accessing a hash with
> hash keys by key impractical.

That logic seems slightly mothering, though. "Ruby prevents you from
doing A because if you did A it might be slow." Ruby doesn't prevent
me from writing:
my_huge_array.delete_if{ |v1|
my_huge_array.find{ |v2| (v1 - v2).abs < mu }
}
I suppose the distinction is that the above is a foolish pairing of
individually-reasonable parts, while Hash#hash is an atomic method
written to optimize speed for one (reasonably useless) use case at the
expense of allowing another use case.


As a related aside:
Having never written a hashing function, I'm uncertain how I'd write
Hash#hash in a way that reasonably prevented two hashes with different
keys and/or values from ending up with the same value. (Multiply
the .hash values of all keys and values in the Hash and then mod them
on a big prime number?) Has anyone taken a stab at implementing this?

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On 10/17/07, Phrogz <phrogz@mac.com> wrote:
> On Oct 17, 6:12 am, "Rick DeNatale" <rick.denat...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/17/07, Paul Butcher <p...@texperts.com> wrote:
> > > Just about every class in the standard library implements == and eql? as
> > > I describe in the article, i.e. eql? tests for equal values and == tests
> > > for "natural" equality (which normally means equal values).
> >
> > > Hash, however, is an exception. Hash#== tests for equal values.
> > > Hash.eql?, however, tests for object identity:
> >
> > > Why is hash the odd one out? I'm sure that there must be a good reason
> > > (Matz?) but I can't at the moment work out what it might be.
> >
> > I think the reason is twofold:
> >
> > 1) Using hashs as keys in another hash is not a common use case. I'm a
> > little hard-pressed to think of why I'd want to, although I'm famous
> > for lack of imagination.
>
> I've wanted it on 3 occasions (that I can remember) now. Here's a
> contrived example derived from the real-world use case I can no longer
> remember:
>
> You have a file like this...
> alpha,beta,15
> gamma,delta,3
> beta,alpha,4
> alpha,alpha,3
> delta,alpha,5
> gamma,delta,7
> ...and you want to sum up the numbers for each unique pair of greek
> letters. Naively, I'd do (and initially tried) something like:
>
> sums = Hash.new{ 0 }
> DATA.each{ |line|
> _, g1, g2, num = /(\w+),(\w+),(\d+)/.match( line ).to_a
> sums[ { g1=>true, g2=>true } ] += num.to_i
> }
>
> I believe I instead resorted to sorting the keys and using a nested
> hash to drill down to the value. It was annoying.

Well in the above code you can change the line:

sums[ { g1=>true, g2=>true } ] += num.to_i
to
sums[[g1,g2].sort] += num.to_i

which I actually think looks cleaner
>
> > 2) Because of the requirement that obj1.eql? obj2 => obj1.hash ==
> > obj2.hash, implementing Hash#hash requires iterating over the keys and
> > values and would be fairly expensive and make accessing a hash with
> > hash keys by key impractical.
>
> That logic seems slightly mothering, though. "Ruby prevents you from
> doing A because if you did A it might be slow." Ruby doesn't prevent
> me from writing:
> my_huge_array.delete_if{ |v1|
> my_huge_array.find{ |v2| (v1 - v2).abs < mu }
> }
> I suppose the distinction is that the above is a foolish pairing of
> individually-reasonable parts, while Hash#hash is an atomic method
> written to optimize speed for one (reasonably useless) use case at the
> expense of allowing another use case.

I suspect that it's just pragmatism

> As a related aside:
> Having never written a hashing function, I'm uncertain how I'd write
> Hash#hash in a way that reasonably prevented two hashes with different
> keys and/or values from ending up with the same value. (Multiply
> the .hash values of all keys and values in the Hash and then mod them
> on a big prime number?) Has anyone taken a stab at implementing this?

That's not the requirement, the requirement is that if two objects are
eql? then their hashes must also be ==, there's nothing to prevent two
objects which aren't eql? to have the same hash value.

In fact let me offer:

require "benchmark"

DATA = <<-END
alpha,beta,15
gamma,delta,3
beta,alpha,4
alpha,alpha,3
delta,alpha,5
gamma,delta,7
END

def hash_key_impl
sums = Hash.new(0)
DATA.each{ |line|
_, g1, g2, num = /(\w+),(\w+),(\d+)/.match( line ).to_a
sums[ { g1=>true, g2=>true } ] += num.to_i
}
sums
end

class HashableHash < Hash
def hash
to_a.sort.hash
end

def eql?(other)
self == other
end
end

def hashable_key_impl
sums = Hash.new(0)
DATA.each{ |line|
_, g1, g2, num = /(\w+),(\w+),(\d+)/.match( line ).to_a
sums[ HashableHash[g1=>true, g2=>true ] ] += num.to_i
}
sums
end

class HashableHash2 < Hash
def hash
1
end

def eql?(other)
self == other
end
end

def hashable2_key_impl
sums = Hash.new(0)
DATA.each{ |line|
_, g1, g2, num = /(\w+),(\w+),(\d+)/.match( line ).to_a
sums[ HashableHash2[g1=>true, g2=>true ] ] += num.to_i
}
sums
end




def array_key_impl
sums = Hash.new(0)
DATA.each{ |line|
_, g1, g2, num = /(\w+),(\w+),(\d+)/.match( line ).to_a
sums[ [g1,g2].sort ] += num.to_i
}
sums
end

p hash_key_impl
p hashable_key_impl
p hashable2_key_impl
p array_key_impl

TESTS = 1000
Benchmark.bmbm do |results|

results.report("hash key:") do
TESTS.times do
hash_key_impl
end
end

results.report("hashable key:") do
TESTS.times do
hashable_key_impl
end
end

results.report("hashable2 key:") do
TESTS.times do
hashable2_key_impl
end
end

results.report("array key:") do
TESTS.times do
array_key_impl
end
end


end

{{"delta"=>true, "gamma"=>true}=>7, {"alpha"=>true, "delta"=>true}=>5,
{"alpha"=>true}=>3, {"alpha"=>true, "beta"=>true}=>4, {"delta"=>true,
"gamma"=>true}=>3, {"alpha"=>true, "beta"=>true}=>15}
{{"delta"=>true, "gamma"=>true}=>10, {"alpha"=>true}=>3,
{"alpha"=>true, "beta"=>true}=>19, {"alpha"=>true, "delta"=>true}=>5}
{{"alpha"=>true, "delta"=>true}=>5, {"alpha"=>true}=>3,
{"delta"=>true, "gamma"=>true}=>10, {"alpha"=>true, "beta"=>true}=>19}
{["alpha", "alpha"]=>3, ["delta", "gamma"]=>10, ["alpha", "beta"]=>19,
["alpha", "delta"]=>5}
Rehearsal --------------------------------------------------
hash key: 0.050000 0.000000 0.050000 ( 0.080213)
hashable key: 0.100000 0.000000 0.100000 ( 0.104884)
hashable2 key: 0.080000 0.000000 0.080000 ( 0.079243)
array key: 0.050000 0.000000 0.050000 ( 0.055140)
----------------------------------------- total: 0.280000sec

user system total real
hash key: 0.050000 0.000000 0.050000 ( 0.050082)
hashable key: 0.100000 0.010000 0.110000 ( 0.101206)
hashable2 key: 0.070000 0.000000 0.070000 ( 0.077322)
array key: 0.050000 0.000000 0.050000 ( 0.051378)


The original hash implementation performs almost exactly the same as
my simple substitution of sorted arrays as the keys, but it has the
distinct disadvantage of getting the wrong answer

I did two different implementations of a HashableHash which use == for
eql? and differ in that one uses information in the hash to compute a
hash value, while the other returns a constant value for hash.

Both are slower than the array key implementation. HashableHash2 is
somewhat faster than HashableHash since the hash method runs in
constant time, but I'm not sure that mapping the hash value to a
constant is a good idea.


--
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On 10/17/07, Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com> wrote:

>
> While we're discussing things with equal signs -- why isn't = a method?

I assume you mean in the execution of an expression like

a = b

as opposed to

a.b = c

Now in the first case, what object is sent the message :=

Remember that variable aren't objects, they are references to objects,
and assignment changes the binding of a variable it doesn't operate on
an object.


--
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/

Re: equal? versus eql? versus == versus === verus <=>
 

On Thu, Oct 18, 2007 at 04:56:48AM +0900, Rick DeNatale wrote:
>
> Remember that variable aren't objects, they are references to objects,
> and assignment changes the binding of a variable it doesn't operate on
> an object.

Oops. I guess I should have thought of that.

Thanks.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
John Kenneth Galbraith: "If all else fails, immortality can always be
assured through spectacular error."