StructEquality.jl

Equality for struct types as you would expect it
Author schlichtanders
Popularity
2 Stars
Updated Last
2 Years Ago
Started In
January 2020

StructEquality

Build Status Coverage

install like

using Pkg
pkg"add StructEquality"

load like

using StructEquality

which gives you access to one macro @def_structequal.

Motivation & Usage

Struct types have an == implementation by default which uses ===, i.e. object identity, on the underlying components to compare structs.

Let's define a struct

struct MyStruct
  a::Int
  b::Vector
end

The default == fails to compare two structs with the same content

MyStruct(1, [2,3]) == MyStruct(1, [2,3])  # false

To fix this use the supplied macro @def_structequal

@def_structequal MyStruct
MyStruct(1, [2,3]) == MyStruct(1, [2,3])  # true

Alternatively you can use the macro right on struct definition

@def_structequal struct MyStruct2
  a::Int
  b::Vector
end
MyStruct2(1, [2,3]) == MyStruct2(1, [2,3])  # true

Implementation

It is like you would expect. the macro extracts the field names and defines == by referring to == comparison of the fields.

@macroexpand @def_structequal MyStruct
:(function Base.:(==)(s1::MyStruct, s2::MyStruct)
      s1.a == s2.a && s1.b == s2.b
  end)

References

For more details to this topic, please see the discourse thread https://discourse.julialang.org/t/surprising-struct-equality-test/4890/9

Required Packages