Dealing with types in Julia

Package TypeUtils provides useful methods to deal with types in Julia and facilitate coding with numbers whether they have units or not. The package provides methods to strip units from numbers or numeric types, convert the numeric type of quantities (not their units), determine appropriate numeric type to carry computations mixing numbers with different types and/or units. These methods make it easy to write code that works consistently for numbers with any units (including none). The intention is that the TypeUtils package automatically extends its exported methods when packages such as Unitful are loaded.

The method, as is designed to cast a value to a given type. The name was inspired by the built-in Zig function @as.

A first usage is:

as(T, x)

which yields x converted to type T. This behaves like a lazy version of convert(T,x)::T doing nothing if x is already of type T and performing the conversion and the type assertion otherwise.

By default, the as method calls convert only if needed but also implements a number of conversions not supported by convert. The as method is therefore a bit more versatile than convert while relaxing the bother to remember which function or constructor to call to efficiently perform the intended conversion. For example:

julia> as(Tuple, CartesianIndex(1,2,3)) # yields tuple of indices
(1, 2, 3)

julia> as(CartesianIndex, (1,2,3)) # calls constructor
CartesianIndex(1, 2, 3)

julia> as(Tuple, CartesianIndices(((-2:5), (1:3)))) # yields tuple of index ranges
(-2:5, 1:3)

julia> as(CartesianIndices, ((-2:5), (1:3))) # calls constructor
CartesianIndices((-2:5, 1:3))

julia> as(String, :hello) # converts symbol to string
"hello"

julia> as(Symbol, "hello") # converts string to symbol
:hello

Another usage is:

as(T)

which yields a callable object that converts its argument to type T. This can be useful with map. For instance:

map(as(Int), dims)

to convert dims to a tuple (or array) of Ints.

Additional conversions becomes possible if another package such as TwoDimensonal is loaded.

unitless(x) yields x without its units, if any. x can be a number or a numeric type. In the latter case, unitless behaves like bare_type described below.

bare_type(x) yields the bare numeric type of x (a numeric value or type). If this method is not extended for a specific type, the fallback implementation yields typeof(one(x)). With more than one argument, bare_type(args...) yields the type resulting from promoting the bare numeric types of args.... With no argument, bare_type() yields TypeUtils.BareNumber the union of bare numeric types that may be returned by this method.

real_type(x) yields the bare real type of x (a numeric value or type). If this method is not extended for a specific type, the fallback implementation yields typeof(one(real(x)). With more than one argument, real_type(args...) yields the type resulting from promoting the bare real types of args.... With no argument, real_type() yields Real the super-type of types that may be returned by this method.

The only difference between bare_type and real_type is how they treat complex numbers. The former preserves the complex kind of its argument while the latter always returns a real type. You may assume that real_type(x) = real(bare_type(x)). Conversely, convert_bare_type(T,x) yields a complex result if T is complex and a real result if T is real whatever x, while convert_real_type(T,x) yields a complex result if x is complex and a real result if x is real, only the real part of T matters for convert_real_type(T,x). See examples below.

floating_point_type(args...) yields a floating-point type appropriate to represent the bare real type of args.... With no argument, floating_point_type() yields AbstractFloat the super-type of types that may be returned by this method. You may consider floating_point_type(args...) as an equivalent to tofloat(real_type(args...)). The floating-point type can be seen as the numerical precision for computations involving args....

convert_bare_type(T,x) converts the bare numeric type of x to the bare numeric type of T while preserving the units of x if any. Argument x may be a number or a numeric type, while argument T must be a numeric type. If x is one of missing, nothing, undef, or the type of one of these singletons, x is returned.

convert_real_type(T,x) converts the bare real type of x to the bare real type of T while preserving the units of x if any. Argument x may be a number or a numeric type, while argument T must be a numeric type. If x is one of missing, nothing, undef, or the type of one of these singletons, x is returned.

convert_floating_point_type(T,x) converts the bare real type of x to the suitable floating-point type for type T while preserving the units of x if any. Argument x may be a number or a numeric type, while argument T must be a numeric type. If x is one of missing, nothing, undef, or the type of one of these singletons, x is returned. You may consider convert_floating_point_type(T,x) as an equivalent to to convert_real_type(float(real_type(T)),x).

The call:

parameterless(T)

yields the type T without parameter specifications. For example:

julia> parameterless(Vector{Float32})
Array

The TypeUtils package provides a few methods to deal with array element types:

• promote_eltype(args...) yields the promoted element type of the arguments args... which may be anything implementing the eltype method.

• convert_eltype(T,A) yields an object similar to A except that its elements have type T.

• as_eltype(T,A) yields an array which lazily converts its entries to type T. This can be seen as a memory-less version of convert_eltype(T,A). The method as_eltype is similar to the method of_eltype provided by the MappedArrays package.

Methods convert_eltype(T,A) and as_eltype(T,A) just return A itself if its elements are of type T.

The call:

g = as_return(T, f)

yields a callable object such that g(args...; kwds...) lazily converts the value returned by f(args...; kwds...) to the type T. Methods return_type(g) and parent(g) can be used to respectively retrieve the type T and the original function f. A similar kind of object be built with the composition operator:

g = as(T)∘f

The method return_type may also be used as:

T = return_type(f, argtypes...)

to infer the type T of the result returned by f when called with arguments of types argtypes....

It is sometime useful to collect the values stored by a structured object into simple collection of values (a tuple or a vector). The reverse operation is also needed. The call:

vals = destructure(obj)

yields a tuple, vals, of the values of the structured object obj and, conversely, the call:

obj = restructure(T, vals)

builds a structured object of type T given vals, a tuple or a vector of its values.

For an immutable concrete object obj, the following identity holds:

restructure(typeof(obj), destructure(obj)) === obj

It is also possible to destructure an object into a given vector of values:

destructure!(vals, obj)

Optionally, in restructure and destructure! methods, keyword offset may be specified to not start with the first value in vals.

Method struct_length yields the minimal number of values needed to destructure an object.

The following examples illustrate the result of the methods provided by TypeUtils, first with bare numbers and bare numeric types, then with quantities:

julia> using TypeUtils

julia> map(unitless, (2.1, Float64, true, ComplexF32))
(2.1, Float64, true, ComplexF32)

julia> map(bare_type, (1, 3.14f0, true, 1//3, π, 1.0 - 2.0im))
(Int64, Float32, Bool, Rational{Int64}, Irrational{:π}, Complex{Float64})

julia> map(real_type, (1, 3.14f0, true, 1//3, π, 1.0 - 2.0im))
(Int64, Float32, Bool, Rational{Int64}, Irrational{:π}, Float64)

julia> map(x -> convert_bare_type(Float32, x), (2, 1 - 0im, 1//2, Bool, Complex{Float64}))
(2.0f0, 1.0f0, 0.5f0, Float32, Float32)

julia> map(x -> convert_real_type(Float32, x), (2, 1 - 0im, 1//2, Bool, Complex{Float64}))
(2.0f0, 1.0f0 + 0.0f0im, 0.5f0, Float32, ComplexF32)

julia> using Unitful

julia> map(unitless, (u"2.1GHz", typeof(u"2.1GHz")))
(2.1, Float64)

julia> map(bare_type, (u"3.2km/s", u"5GHz", typeof((0+1im)*u"Hz")))
(Float64, Int64, Complex{Int64})

julia> map(real_type, (u"3.2km/s", u"5GHz", typeof((0+1im)*u"Hz")))
(Float64, Int64, Int64)

The following example shows a first attempt to use bare_type to implement efficient in-place multiplication of an array (whose element may have units) by a real factor (which must be unitless in this context):

function scale!(A::AbstractArray, α::Number)
    alpha = convert_bare_type(eltype(A), α)
    @inbounds @simd for i in eachindex(A)
        A[i] *= alpha
    end
    return A
end

An improvement is to realize that when α is a real while the entries of A are complexes, it is more efficient to multiply the entries of A by a real-valued multiplier rather than by a complex one. Implementing this is as simple as replacing convert_bare_type by convert_real_type to only convert the bare real type of the multiplier while preserving its complex/real kind:

function scale!(A::AbstractArray, α::Number)
    alpha = convert_real_type(eltype(A), α)
    @inbounds @simd for i in eachindex(A)
        A[i] *= alpha
    end
    return A
end

This latter version consistently and efficiently deals with α being real while the entries of A are reals or complexes, and with α and the entries of A being complexes. If α is a complex and the entries of A are reals, the statement A[i] *= alpha will throw an InexactConversion if the imaginary part of α is not zero. This check is probably optimized out of the loop by Julia but, to handle this with guaranteed no loss of efficiency, the code can be written as:

function scale!(A::AbstractArray, α::Union{Real,Complex})
    alpha = if α isa Complex && bare_type(eltype(A)) isa Real
        convert(real_type(eltype(A)), α)
    else
        convert_real_type(eltype(A), α)
    end
    @inbounds @simd for i in eachindex(A)
        A[i] *= alpha
    end
    return A
end

The restriction α::Union{Real,Complex} accounts for the fact that in-place multiplication imposes a unitless multiplier. Since the test leading to the expression used for alpha is based on the types of the arguments, the branch is eliminated at compile time and the type of alpha is known by the compiler. The InexactConversion exception may then only be thrown by the call to convert in the first branch of the test.

This seemingly very specific case was in fact the key point to allow for packages such as LazyAlgebra or LinearInterpolators to work seamlessly on arrays whose entries may have units. The TypeUtils (formerly Unitless) package was created to cover this need as transparently as possible.

TypeUtils can be installed as any other official Julia packages. For example:

using Pkg
Pkg.add("TypeUtils")