Maps 101: All you need to know about them!

[iamtheky]

Dont take what he said for granted, as a rule of thumb there are many different kinds of thumbs.

[mrider]

I am myself still discovering the usage of maps, I have stumbled upon 1 or 2 usage(s) until now... nothing worth mentioning here

How about being able to write Object Oriented code using nothing more than Maps and function addresses?  Roughly analogous to how Perl or Python do it?

#include <MsgBoxConstants.au3>
Local $aObjs[2] = [NewFoo(), NewBar()]
For $i = 0 To UBound($aObjs) - 1
;    Local $sMsg = ($aObjs[$i])["Output"]() ;<-- Granted, this is a bit stilted
    Local $sMsg = ($aObjs[$i].Output)() ; <-- Better, but could still be improved...
    MsgBox($MB_SYSTEMMODAL, "Test", $sMsg)
Next
Func NewFoo()
    Local $mPseudoObj[]
    $mPseudoObj["Output"] = FooOutput
    Return $mPseudoObj
EndFunc
Func FooOutput()
    Return "Foo"
EndFunc

Func NewBar()
    Local $mPseudoObj[]
    $mPseudoObj["Output"] = BarOutput
    Return $mPseudoObj
EndFunc
Func BarOutput()
    Return "Bar"
EndFunc

 

Edited December 1, 2015 by mrider

[TheDcoder]

@mrider Let me tell you that I am no PRO programmer (a total noob at OOP in that case)!

[iamtheky]

have to kill au3check to utilize it in @mrider fashion. 

[TheSaint]

Rule of thumb. Isn't that what your Mum holds over your Dad? Many dads appear to be happy living under that condition ... or at least they pretend to be.

It's all about Harmony and Context ... or Conditions.

You can compare everything and we do it all the time, but is it valid? That is the question.

It is valid to compare Apples and Oranges, if you are looking for the tastiest fruit of your liking.

However, in another context, the comparison may be invalid (i.e. are Oranges better than Apples).

Too many factors (some conflicting) to be able to easily come up with a penultimate answer to that last one.

[mrider]

@‌TheDcoder - Python might be a good choice for a second (or whatever) language.  I'm not one of those that thinks that OOP is the solution to all problems, but it sure works well in some cases.

 

[EDIT] @‌boththose - yeah, I forgot about that.  I'm more or less just waiting until Maps are either brought into production or abandoned.  I used the Beta version for a while, but I'm not in a position to be on the leading edge of pretty much anything.  Anyway, thanks for the reminder.

Edited December 2, 2015 by mrider

[iamtheky]

@mrider - agreed I am using my scripting dictionary implementation and expanding on that until further developments.

[TheDcoder]

Python might be a good choice for a second (or whatever) language.

Ahhh... python... My very first language... which I failed to learn .

[Kealper]

Since it looks like some people were unsure of what I was trying to say in my benchmark, I've edited my post about the benchmark with this clarification:

CLARIFICATION: Please understand that this benchmark is NOT comparing the performance of arrays to the performance of maps.
The two serve different purposes, and if you put arrays versus maps in a fair benchmark, arrays will be faster. This is true for pretty much any programming language.
This benchmark is comparing the methods available for doing a native, dynamically-sized, in-memory key/value store. In the current stable release of AutoIt, the only way to do this without relying on external COM objects (Scripting.Dictionary) is to use a dynamically-sized two-dimensional array. (Or two one-dimensional dynamically-sized arrays, but we'll not get into that as there's not really a good reason to do that over a two-dimensional one.) In the current beta of AutoIt, the map type allows for exactly that, without all of the boilerplate code needed to implement them, as well as a huge speed increase to them since the heavy lifting is being done internally in the interpreter as opposed to being done in AutoIt. One of the key features of this data type is that the amount of things it can store is not a fixed size. This means the more stuff you want to add, the bigger it will grow. The more things you delete from it, the smaller it shrinks. If you need to iterate over a map, it won't have to waste time running through, for example, 9,975 blank entries just to read the 25 populated entries like you would with a 10,000-element fixed-size array.
For those saying that this benchmark is not fair to arrays and that there's a more efficient way to do it so they end up doing much better in the benchmark: I know, this isn't meant to be "arrays vs. maps", it's meant to be "fake maps vs. native maps". There's also some optimization that can be done with my FakeMap code, because ReDim is actually pretty slow, but adding that would make the example code harder to read while the end result would still be the same.

[mobin]

On 20.10.2015 at 1:22 PM, TheDcoder said:

A Note for Readers

[...] Also the maps datatype is DISABLED IN STABLE VERSIONS, So you need to install the latest beta version of AutoIt to make maps work . If you find any bugs while using a map, please report it in the Official Bug Tracker

 

 

Very interesting thread. Are Maps still in Beta I wonder?!

[BrewManNH]

8 minutes ago, mobin said:

Very interesting thread. Are Maps still in Beta I wonder?!

Instead of asking here, you should have just looked at the beta page, or downloaded it and answered your own question. 

[TheDcoder]

@mobin Yes, they are still in beta

[VAN0]

Very useful feature! I wonder how much faster maps are compare to ObjCreate("Scripting.Dictionary")?

A little issue though, we can't use ["key"] method to define second and beyond levels

#Region ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
#AutoIt3Wrapper_Version=Beta
#EndRegion ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****

Global $mMap[]
Global $mObj[]
$mMap.level1 = $mObj
$mMap['level1'] = $mObj
$mMap.level1.level2 = "blah"
$mMap.level1['level2'] = "blah" ;error: Statement cannot be just an expression

 

[Serg2000mr]

On 6/21/2020 at 8:56 PM, VAN0 said:

 Very useful feature! I wonder how much faster maps are compare to ObjCreate("Scripting.Dictionary")?

A little issue though, we can't use ["key"] method to define second and beyond levels

#Region ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****
#AutoIt3Wrapper_Version=Beta
#EndRegion ;**** Directives created by AutoIt3Wrapper_GUI ****

Global $mMap[]
Global $mObj[]
$mMap.level1 = $mObj
$mMap['level1'] = $mObj
$mMap.level1.level2 = "blah"
$mMap.level1['level2'] = "blah" ;error: Statement cannot be just an expression

 

Can't define, but can use defined

Global $mMap[]
Global $mObj[]
$mMap.el1 = $mObj
$mMap.el2 = $mObj

$mMap.el1.el11 = "blah "
$mMap.el2.el21 = "blah2 "

MsgBox($MB_OK, "", $mMap.el1.el11 & $mMap.el2.el21 & $mMap.el2["el21"])

; Result:  "blah blah2 blah2 "

 

Edited October 11 by Serg2000mr