DDevelopment & Design

Turing completeness

  • bypawelz
  • October 23, 2010
  • 2 minute read

sed is a very powerful tool. A simple sed statement may turn a cat into cement. Observe: echo cat | sed statement I was asked by mariom@ircnet whether is it possible to implement the Euklidean algorithm (the one that computes the greatest common divisor) in awk. awk is a Turing complete language, so the answer is yes, it is possible. There is a snippet proposed by mariom:

{
    a = $1;
    b = $2;
    while (b != 0) {
        c = a % b;
        a = b;
        b = c;
    }
    print a
}

Anyway, my response was that it is possible even in sed. Is it? Of course! Sed is a Turing complete language. Though I had no idea how to write it in sed. I use sed for simple substitutions only, but I could not admit that! I started googling for arithmetic operations in sed and I found

a dc implementation in pure sed. So the next question is how to implement the Euklidean algorithm in dc. It turned out to be quite simple, see:

[lalb%sclbsalcsblb0

This code assumes that there are two integers on the stack. So you can test it with something like that:

echo '20 25 [lalb%sclbsalcsblb0

Let’s analyze what is happening there. There is F macro that is equivalent of “while” loop in awk code. It

loads the values of a and b registers on the stack. Then replaces them with their reminder and saves it in the c registers.

lbsalcsb

statement just copies the value of

b to a and c to b. Finaly it compares the value of b with 0. If former is greater it executes F (note: recurrence. It is the only way to implement a loop in dc). Otherwise it quits.

sasblFxlap

statement is an entry point. It saves values from stack in the 

a and b registers, then executes F and prints the content of the a register. So this sed script is an equivalent of awk script that executes Euklidean algothm. Now it is enough to embed the dc script into dc.sed, et voila! Enjoy: Euclidean algorithm implemented in pure sed.

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DDevelopment & Design

Inconsistent Dependency Injection to domains with Grails

I've encountered strange behavior with a domain class in my project: services that should be injected were null. I've became suspicious as why is that? Services are injected properly in other domain classes so why this one is different?

Constructors experiment

I've created an experiment. I've created empty LibraryService that should be injected and Book domain class like this:

class Book {
    def libraryService

    String author
    String title
    int pageCount

    Book() {
        println("Finished constructor Book()")
    }

    Book(String author) {
        this()
        this.@author = author
        println("Finished constructor Book(String author)")
    }

    Book(String author, String title) {
        super()
        this.@author = author
        this.@title = title
        println("Finished constructor Book(String author, String title)")
    }

    Book(String author, String title, int pageCount) {
        this.@author = author
        this.@title = title
        this.@pageCount = pageCount
        println("Finished constructor Book(String author, String title, int pageCount)")
    }

    void logInjectedService() {
        println("    Service libraryService is injected? -> $libraryService")
    }
}
class LibraryService {
    def serviceMethod() {
    }
}

Book has 4 explicit constructors. I want to check which constructor is injecting dependecies. This is my method that constructs Book objects and I called it in controller: 

class BookController {
    def index() {
        constructAndExamineBooks()
    }

    static constructAndExamineBooks() {
        println("Started constructAndExamineBooks")
        Book book1 = new Book().logInjectedService()
        Book book2 = new Book("foo").logInjectedService()
        Book book3 = new Book("foo", 'bar').logInjectedService()
        Book book4 = new Book("foo", 'bar', 100).logInjectedService()
        Book book5 = new Book(author: "foo", title: 'bar')
        println("Finished constructor Book(Map params)")
        book5.logInjectedService()
    }
}

Analysis

Output looks like this:

Started constructAndExamineBooks
Finished constructor Book()
    Service libraryService is injected? -> eu.spoonman.refaktor.LibraryService@2affcce2
Finished constructor Book()
Finished constructor Book(String author)
    Service libraryService is injected? -> eu.spoonman.refaktor.LibraryService@2affcce2
Finished constructor Book(String author, String title)
    Service libraryService is injected? -> null
Finished constructor Book(String author, String title, int pageCount)
    Service libraryService is injected? -> null
Finished constructor Book()
Finished constructor Book(Map params)
    Service libraryService is injected? -> eu.spoonman.refaktor.LibraryService@2affcce2

What do we see?

  1. ✔

    Empty constructor injects dependencies.

  2. ✔

    Constructor that invokes empty constructor explicitly injects dependencies.

  3. ✘

    Constructor that invokes parent's constructor explicitly does not inject dependencies.

  4. ✘

    Constructor without any explicit call declared does not call empty constructor thus it does not inject dependencies.

  5. ✔

    Constructor provied by Grails with a map as a parameter invokes empty constructor and injects dependencies.

Conclusion

Always explicitily invoke empty constructor in your Grail domain classes to ensure Dependency Injection! I didn't know until today either!