Objects

This page introduces GOLD’s object system, via example. In the following, note that:

• Class names are lower case with one upper case, leading letter;
  • e.g. “Some” (see below).
• Object constructors are functions with the same name as the class;
  • e.g. see the “Some” function (below).
• Object methods are functions with two upper case letters. Each method has to start with a class name;
  • e.g. see the “SomeAdd” function (below).
• Object attribute accessors are implemented with a dot notation. These accessors can be nested;
  • e.g. “a.b.c.d”.

The Some class described below generates objects that store up to most items, in an associated cache array.

Note that GOLD constructors’ first act is a call to a super class constructor (and the top-level built-in constructor is Object).

function Some(i,     most) {
  isa(Object(i))
  i.most = either(most,256) # keep up to `most` number of items
  i.n = 0
  i.sorted = 0
  has(i,"cache")            # i.cache holds the kept value
}

Whenever we add a new items, the sorted flag gets set to false (which, GAWK-speak, means sorted=0). If our cache is full, then we replace items at random. This function returns (0 or 1) according to whether or the function (ignores or keeps) the added item, respectively.

function SomeAdd(i,v,    added,len) {
  i.n++
  i.sorted = 0
  len = length(i.cache)
  if (len < i.most) {  # the cache is not full, add something
    push(i.cache,v)
    added = 1
  } else if (rand() < len/i.n) {  # else, sometimes, add "v"
    i.cache[ int(len*rand()) + 1 ] = v
    added = 1
  }
  return added
}

If ever we want the median of the numbers, first we check if everything is sorted. If not, we sort the cache then call a standard median function on that cache.

function SomeMedian(i,  m,n) {
  n= i.sorted ? length(i.cache) : asort(i.cache)
  i.sorted=1
  return median(i.cache)
}

Inside GOLD

All the following code comes with the file gold.gold (created by the GOLD installation procedure).

The Object Base Class

GOLD’s built-in top-level class is Object. In the Object constructor:

• The new function (shown below), creates a new empty array.
• Then GOLD adds a unique identifier called oid for each object;
• And a text flag describing the class (isa).

function Object(i) { 
  new(i)
  i["isa"] = "Object"
  i["oid"] = ++OID 
}

function new(i) { split("",i,"") }

Aggregation (one-to-one)

In the above Some constructor, the has function adds a nested array in the cache field. The trick to adding nested arrays in GAWK is:

• The first time that field is references, then make it an array. Then use split to make sure that array is an empty array.
• Optionally, pass down a constructor to fill in that space. If no such constructor is passed, then we just leave the field is an array.

# constructor takes zero arguments
function has(lst,key,fun) {
  lst[key][SUBSEP]
  split("",lst[key],"")
  if (fun) @fun(lst[key])
}

For an example of the use of this has function, see the above Some constructor. In that example, there is no fun so we are just constructing an simple array.

Aggregation (one-to-many)

Sometimes you want one object to hold a list of other objects. For example, a simple csv file reader might want to keep a representative sample of all the values seen in each column. To do that, it needs to maintain one Some object per column,

The following code creates an array i.cols inside Columns. Then, for coluumns, col=1,2,3,4, it constructs Some objects at position i.cols[col]:

# e.g. called via 
# Somes(i,"age,country,gender,salary")
#
function Somes(i,names,    col,a) {
   isa(Object(i))
   has(i,"cols")
   split(names,a,",")
   for(col in a)
      has(i.cols,col,"Some")
}

In this case, the Some constructor has zero arguments. To support other cases, where the constructor takes multiple arguments, GOLD supports other constructors:

# constructor needing 1,2,3,4,5,6 arguments
function has1(a,k,f,b)           { has(a,k); @f(a[k],b) }
function has2(a,k,f,b,c)         { has(a,k); @f(a[k],b,c) }
function has3(a,k,f,b,c,d)       { has(a,k); @f(a[k],b,c,d) }
function has4(a,k,f,b,c,d,e)     { has(a,k); @f(a[k],b,c,d,e) }
function has5(a,k,f,b,c,d,e,g)   { has(a,k); @f(a[k],b,c,d,e,g) }
function has6(a,k,f,b,c,d,e,g,h) { has(a,k); @f(a[k],b,c,d,e,g,h) }

(Note the convention: has is for constructors with zero arguments and hasN is for constructors with “N” arguments.)

To see these in action, suppose a Has object holds the column number, the name of the column, as well as a sample of the values. Its constructor is:

function Has(i,pos,name) {
  isa(Some(i))
  i.name = name
  i.pos  = pos
}

We could create an array of four Has objects as follows:

# e.g. called via
# Have(i,"age,country,gender,salary")
#
function Have(i,names,    col,words) {
   isa(Object(i))
   has(i,"cols")
   split(names,words,",")
   for(col in words)
      has2(i.cols,col,"Has", col, words[col])
}

The resulting object design would hence be: