Design patterns

Slides

Let’s move beyond OO and learn from other paradigms and patterns. These are not exclusive - you may use some or all of the ideas here to inform your class design. You might use OOP ideas to help your functional patterns. Etc.

Functional Programming

In its own section, see following page.

Type dispatch

Type dispatch can be seen as an alternative to OOP, though it’s often used in conjunction with it (unless you are in Julia). Type dispatch is a bit “non-Pythonic” in that it’s slightly problematic with duck typing, but you can use it.

First we start with the “general” implementation; this will get called if none of the types match:

import functools

@functools.singledispatch
def generic(x):
    raise NotImplementedError("General implementation")

Now we can register one or more types:

@generic.register(int)
def _(x):
    print(f"I know how to compute {x}, it's an int!")

@generic.register(float)
def _(x):
    print(f"I know how to compute {x}, it's an float!")

Now we can call this with ints or floats, but nothing else. It dispatches different versions depending on the types it sees.

Python specific tips

• Only the first argument will be used for the dispatch. Other arguments are ignored.

• You can use type annotations instead

• You can stack multiple registers

  • Or use Unions (Python 3.11+)

• Duck typing is supported through Protocols

• Methods start with self - so there’s a singledispatchmethod too

Other languages have varying levels of support for type dispatch. C++ supports it, while C does not. Julia is designed around it. It’s a key part of Rust (though in a rather different form).

A benefit of type dispatch over OOP is that it tends to be more modular. A drawback is that some patterns of code reuse are not available.

Coroutines

A powerful flow control scheme is Generators / Iterators / Coroutines. These are objects that can stop and resume. In Python, a Generator looks like this:

def my_range(n):
    for i in range(n):
        yield i

The presence of a yield causes the function to become a generator. The return value of this function is not an int, it’s an iterable object. Expressions like for i in my_range(3) or list(my_range(3)) are valid uses of the return value.

Empty generator

The presence of a yield anywhere in a function causes a function to be a generator. So this is actually an empty generator:

def empty():
    return
    yield

The yield in the body forces a generator, which then never yields, but simply returns immediately, making an empty iterator. That’s probably a bit less readable than this alternative, though:

def empty():
    yield from ()

The examples above are a subset of generators often called “iterators”, because they only produce values, and do not take values in. There is a way to “send” values into a generator, though it doesn’t really have a special in-language syntax like a for loop or list/tuple.

There is a second sort of coroutine in Python called an async function. It is conceptually the same sort of thing as a generator, except with yield from being written as await. They also fixed the language issue with a single word being found in the body changing the return type by replacing def with async def. If generators were written today, there probably would be some keyword before def for them, removing the “empty generator” weirdness and keeping the reader from having to manually look at the body of the entire function for any yields. If you’ve had experience with compiled languages, you know that the signature of a function is supposed to be the public interface of the function, and users should not have to look into the body! This issue in Python will be corrected when we cover static types.

Generators can be used as a programming model. For example, you might have the following imperative code to counts the words in a file:

with open(name, encoding="utf-8") as f:
    lines = list(f)

stripped_lines = [line.strip() for line in lines]
words_lines = [line.split() for line in stripped_lines]
words_per_line = [len(words) for words in words_lines]
print("Total words:", sum(words_per_line))

This has a problem: every line in the file gets stored in memory (multiple times!). The lists lines, stripped_lines, words_lines, and words_per_line are all intermediate copies we don’t want. Now we could redesign this doing all the computation in one go:

with open(name, encoding="utf-8") as f:
    total = 0
    for line in f:
        stripped_line = line.strip()
        words_line = stripped_line.split()
        words_per_line = len(words_line)
        total += words_per_line

print("Total words:", total)

But this might not match the problem very well. Also we might want the words-per-line list, which would be harder to get from the second example.

We could rewrite this using a generator:

Inline generators

with open(name, encoding="utf-8") as f:
    stripped_lines = (line.strip() for line in f)
    words_lines = (line.split() for line in stripped_lines)
    words_per_line = (len(words) for words in words_lines)
    print("Total words:", sum(words_per_line))

Generator function

def word_counter(name):
    with open(name, encoding="utf-8") as f:
        for line in f:
            stripped_line = line.strip()
            words_line = stripped_line.split()
            words_per_line = len(words_line)
            yield words_per_line


print("Total words:", sum(word_counter(name)))

In both examples above, a list is never made. You never store more than one line of a file in memory. Notice how in the inline version, we needed to keep the file open, since at each step we were building a generator that had not yet iterated over the source material. In both cases, the iteration only happens when we call sum.

Refactoring

When programming with functions, a key feature is we can always take a subsection of the function out and place it in a new function. With generators, if that section of code includes one or more yields, you can do the same thing with yield from starting in Python 3.3, which made generators fully refactorable.

This syntax is really just a shortcut for making iterable objects, which is done through magic methods. Iterators can be restartable and have an estimated length (neither of which is available on the shortcut syntax using yield).

Reading a file is a particularly good use case for this, as Python’s performance is about equal or faster than file IO, meaning the most optimized file read and a Python program that runs Python code on each line of a file are likely to be competitive. One terrible use case for this style is array programming, due to the extreme overhead of an interpreted language. An alternative is array based programming, which is up next.

Other languages have the concept of iterators (and it’s not that hard to write it yourself with objects, it’s just better to have a standard). C++ traditionally prefers “start/end iterators” which are objects that can be +1’d and eventually compare equal, but modern C++ has coroutines (C++20) and a helper to make iterators (std::generator, C++23) - it looks about like you’d expect, with co_yield instead of yield. The C++ version was designed to be general enough to back async support, too, in a single concept.

Array programming

This is not always mentioned as a programming paradigm, but it is one, and an important one for the sciences. Consider the following square of an array in imperative code:

import numpy as np


input_data = np.array([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9])
output_data = np.array([0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0])

for i in range(len(input_data)):
    output_data[i] = input_data[i]**2

This describes what happens to each element. We could have chosen a functional procedure instead:

output_data = np.fromiter(map(lambda x: x**2, input_data), int)

This still describes what happens on each element in Python. Python has to loop over the array, doing a lot of work like checking the types, looking up methods, creating and destroying Python objects, when really this could be done much more efficiently if you just had a pre-compiled function.

Interpreted languages (like Matlab) as well as a library for Python (NumPy) came upon a solution to this problem, from the original APL: array-at-a-time calculations. It looks like this:

output_data = input_data**2

NumPy has overloaded most of the special methods for arrays so that actions on an array run a pre-compiled routine that does not have to do all the checks Python does to be general and dynamic. You get full compiled-like performance for simple operations. It’s also a different paradigm when working with arrays; it’s short and concise, and can read very well (though sometimes it’s a bit harder to write).

Here’s a quick example:

x, y = np.mgrid[0:5:501j, 0.5:3.5:301j]
radius = np.sqrt(x**2 + y**2)
print(f"{x.shape=}, {y.shape=}\n{radius[400,250] = }")

x.shape=(501, 301), y.shape=(501, 301)
radius[400,250] = np.float64(5.0)

Here, we make a grid of values that represent x and y over a fixed grid. Then we can work with the values much like we’d write math, and everything happens element-wise. We can also take these values, mask out values more than 5, then plot the result:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

mradius = np.ma.masked_where(radius > 5, radius)
fix, ax = plt.subplots()
ax.pcolormesh(x, y, mradius)
ax.set_aspect("equal")
plt.show()

See this SciPy tutorial: loopy programming for more about array based languages & NumPy.

Memory safety

Garbage collected languages

Many higher level languages have a garbage collector (most interpreted languages, and languages like C#, D, Java, Go). These work by keeping a reference count, and tracking how many ways you can reference an object. Once that hits zero, the garbage collector is allowed to remove the object to free memory.

This means we almost don’t have to think about memory management. But it also means we can’t control memory management either. We don’t control “when” the garbage collector runs (at least as a library developer).

The problems with garbage collection:

• Performance is unpredictable: you might have a garbage collector running in the middle of what you are doing.

• Reference cycles can take time to detect.

• Objects may never be deleted: implementation defined.

The last point is an important one. One useful way to think of it: A valid garbage collector implementation could be a computer with infinite memory. Real implementations instead usually run the collector at some frequency and detect some number of reference cycles. Take the following class:

class CheckDestruct:
    def __del__(self):
        print("Bye!")

a = CheckDestruct()
del a

Bye!

First, note that del does not call __del__. It simply removes a, which decreases the refcount by one. If the refcount was 2, this will not be deleted.

a = CheckDestruct()
b = a
del a

You have to delete all ways of accessing the object for the refcount to reach zero:

b = "something_else"

Bye!

Notice we didn’t need del, any way of removing the way to access the object through b works.

There are multiple ways you can avoid the word “Bye” showing up. If this gets referenced in IPython’s history, it is really hard to get the refcount down to zero. If you turn down the frequency of the garbage collector, it will happen later (defaults to once per line). If you use PyPy instead of CPython, the garbage collector runs less frequently.

A second problem occurs if an object is in globals, and gets cleaned up during interpreter shutdown. At that point, the interpreter may have started deleting sys.modules, so using something that was imported from elsewhere can be problematic. In general, very few classes have __del__ in Python, and they are very defensively programmed when they do, and only used for emergency cleanup. For required cleanup, context managers (with blocks) are preferred. Python 3.4 also significantly improved finalization, making __del__ less dangerous.

Reference cycles are the main reason for the garbage collector running. Let’s say you have two of these objects and they reference each other:

a = CheckDestruct()
b = CheckDestruct()
a.other = b
b.other = a
del a, b

Let’s import the gc and force a full collection:

import gc
gc.collect()

Bye!

Bye!

23

There we go. It detected the reference cycle, and cleaned it up for us. Note: there is a chance the collection will run by itself; if you try this yourself, you might see it happen before you can make it to the collect call.

Garbage collector vs. refcount

CPython will automatically delete anything that has a refcount that drops to 0 when that happens. The garbage collector is there to detect reference cycles and also delete those. You can disable the garbage collector with gc.disable(), and you will only lose reference cycle deletion.

If you ask sys.getrefcount(...) for the refcount of an object, it will start at 2; the use of it as a parameter increases it by one during the getrefcount call!

You can avoid the cycle manually if you want (this is extremely rare in Python):

import weakref

a = CheckDestruct()
b = CheckDestruct()
a.other = b
b.other = weakref.ref(a)
del a, b

Bye!

Bye!

Now b.other does not keep a alive, so deleting a is enough to delete it completely. But, on the flipside, if you do delete only a and not b, then b.other will be invalid!

Memory management and moves

Let’s look at C++ (& Rust in a minute) so that we can see manual memory management. All C++ examples can be run on public compiler services, like https://wandbox.org, which allows you to load files and create shareable links, and https://cpp.sh, which compiles on a server using Emscripten then runs the code in your webbrowser using the WebAssembly output. The most famous online compilers is https://godbolt.org, which supports a massive number of compilers and has the most advanced interface. “Godbolting” is a term you’ll sometimes hear when it comes to testing something out quickly.

You can find similar online tools for most of the other languages (all snipits in this course work on online playgrounds). For example, Rust has https://play.rust-lang.org.

Later we’ll compile things ourselves. But this works for quick example demos. Unless specified, all examples use C++20.

For a compiled language, you have access to two types of memory:

The stack

The stack is pre-allocated when you start your program. The stack is local - you can only access it in the scope (frame) that it is in, and not above - unloading the current frame unloads the stack associated with it. It is automatically reclaimed at the end of scope. In C or C++, defining a local variable places it on the stack:

int main() { // The "main" stack is allocated here
    int x = 2;
    return 0;
} // The stack is removed here

In C, you used to have to declare all variables at the top of a function, because it’s preparing the stack for the current function. In modern C and C++, you can define variables anywhere, and the compiler will prepare the appropriate stack for you. It’s still placed at the top, because the stack is contagious.

The biggest problem with the stack is it’s not dynamic; you can’t request a runtime dependent amount of it. It’s also limited (you can adjust the limit in the linker); each program gets a free continuous block of memory equal to the maximum stack size, 1MB by default on most systems. It’s (mostly) hard to run out of it unless you try. And of course, since it’s loaded/unloaded with the function you are in, it’s not shared between different parts of your program. It was designed to hold local variables required for a function’s operation.

The heap

If you need more, shared, or dynamic memory, you need to use the heap. The heap is managed by your OS, and you can generally access as much as you want (until you run out of memory), and you can allocate and deallocate in it at will. That’s both the feature, and the problem…

Manual management

Classic heap allocation looks like this in C++ (C uses the functions malloc and dealloc, and you have to specify the exact number of bytes you need, because it’s C):

int main() {
    int* x = new int;  // a
    *x = 2;            // b
    delete x;          // c
    return 0;
}

This has one stack variable x, which a pointer to an int. It’s a 64-bit number (on a 64-bit OS, anyway - that’s what the bitiness of the OS refers to) pointing to a memory address. We request a new allocation on the heap on line a, and the pointer points at this place in the heap. In line b, we are dereferencing the pointer (*x, and yes this feels backwards, since the * in the line above indicated a pointer, while here it’s getting the thing the pointer points at), and then assigning 2 into that memory location. If we were to use *x again, it would be 2. Finally, we have to delete our heap memory manually in line c.

The biggest issue is the new / delete pattern. We have to have the delete in order to keep from leaking memory (during the program execution, the OS tracks the program allocations and cleans up everything when it exits). The OS doesn’t now how to call destructors, so C++ objects allocated in the heap will also never run their destructors if you forget delete. We also shouldn’t deference a pointer after it’s been deleted (remember our state discussion?), or delete it twice, or delete before new, or call new twice before delete, etc. If an exception is thrown (yes, C++ has those), then we could easily take a path that misses delete. Really, it’s a mess.

One useful convention: set the pointer to nullptr after you delete. This way, if you try to use it again, you’ll be trying to use nullptr, which is a crash, instead of using some random place in memory that might be a crash or might be all sorts of weird behavior. Even better, you can then also check to see if it’s nullptr!

Simplest convention, though: never call new / delete manually. There are better patterns.

Using Classes to implement RAII

One way to manage heap safely is to tie it to classes. C++ has constructors and destructors, so why not use them for new / delete? This is called Resource Allocation Is Initialization - you are tying the resource allocation to class initialization (and destruction, obviously).

#include <iostream>

class HeapInt {
  private:
    int* value;

  public:
    HeapInt(int init) : value(new int(init)) {}  // Constructor
    HeapInt(const HeapInt&) = delete;  // Copy constructor
    HeapInt& operator=(const HeapInt&) = delete;  // Copy assignment
    ~HeapInt() {  // Destructor
        delete value;
    }
    void set_value(int val) {
        *value = val;
    }
    int get_value() const {
        return *value;
    }
};

int main() {
    HeapInt three{3};  // a

    std::cout << three.get_value() << std::endl;
    return 0;  // b
}

Here, we create a class that manages allocating and freeing memory in it’s constructor/destructor. Now, to use it, we just create an instance of HeapInt - the act of doing this allocates the value on the heap. When our class goes out of scope, it takes the heap out too. We are using the stack to manage the heap!

This doesn’t solve all our problems (specifically, we still can’t create this inside one function and then “move” it to another function with a different stack), but we’ll get there. In fact, we completely ignored copying as well for simplicity - we’ll talk about copying when we get to smart pointers.

A lot of the standard library (and C++ classes in general) does this. For example, std::string can hold arbitrary sized strings by using the heap (well, mostly - it has a small stack allocation and it will put very small strings in there if they fit). Copying a std::string makes a copy of the heap allocation. Other common heap structures include most of the containers like std::vector, all the sets and maps. std::array is an exception; since the size is part of the template, it is allocated on the stack. That’s why it requires the size ahead of time and can’t be resized.

Adding Moves

C++11 added a powerful new concept to C++: moves. The idea is this: you can tell C++ that a variable can no longer be accessed after a usage. Then a special constructor (the move constructor) will be used instead of the copy constructor. The stack does not move; the move constructor may be supported, but it’s no different than a copy. But the heap can, so the move constructor can simply reassign ownership of the heap to the new object.

Let’s go ahead and expand our little example from above:

#include <memory>
#include <iostream>

template<typename T>
class HeapHolder {
  private:
    T* value;

  public:
    HeapHolder(T init) : value(new T(init)) {}  // Constructor
    HeapHolder(const HeapHolder& init) = delete;  // Copy constructor
    HeapHolder(HeapHolder&& init) noexcept : value(init.value) {  // Move constructor
        init.value = nullptr;
    }
    HeapHolder& operator=(const HeapHolder& other) = delete;  // copy assignment
    HeapHolder& operator=(HeapHolder&& other) noexcept { // move assignment
        return *this = HeapHolder(other);
    }
    ~HeapHolder() {  // Destructor
        if(value != nullptr)
            delete value;
    }
    T& operator*() {  // Overload *self (like smart pointers)
        return *value;
    }
};

int main() {
    HeapHolder<int> start{3};
    HeapHolder<int> middle{std::move(start)}; // a
    HeapHolder<int> moved = std::move(middle); // b
    std::cout << *moved << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

A few things have changed:

• This is now templated. It works with more that just ints.

• There is now a move constructor that takes over the memory (and nullifies the original).

• The destructor now only clears memory if it has active memory.

• We now overload *item to access the contained object, like the stdlib.

We play with both the move constructor (a) and the move assignment (b), and then print out the result.

If you actually implement classes like the ones above, you should probably hold std::unique_ptr(s) (see below) and still avoid writing your own new / delete, even in a class. Also, it’s a bit more common to swap pointers in move constructors than make the class handle nullptr’s, but I thought the above looked simpler.

Smart pointers

The above pattern is useful. So useful, in fact, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a templated way to do this for an arbitrary type you want to “hold”? In order to do that, we have to solve the copy problem we ignored above. What happens when you copy this “smart pointer” as we’ll call it? We have two choices: We can do the best computer science thing when faced with a hard problem: just don’t allow it!

This is called a unique pointer, std::unique_ptr in C++. Here’s the above example:

#include <memory>
#include <iostream>

int main() {
    std::unique_ptr<int> heap_int_a{new int(3)};  // Original C++11
    auto heap_int_b = std::make_unique<int>(3);  // C++14 required

    std::cout << *heap_int_a << " " << *heap_int_b << std::endl;
    return 0;
}

This is movable too.

The other way is we can keep a reference count (this is sounding like Python!). This reference count is a bit expensive because it is thread-safe (which just means you can copy std::shared_ptr’s in multiple threads without worry about corrupting memory), but it basically gives you a Python-like experience where you can use it without thinking and it gets cleaned up when the last copy goes out of scope.

You use std::shared_ptr in exactly the same way as std::unique_ptr above, with the only difference being std::make_shared was available in C++11, it took three more years to add std::make_unique for some reason. Unique pointers disallow copies (like our example), while shared pointers keep a refcount and work a lot like the Python objects we are used to. There’s no garbage collector, so you are responsible for avoiding reference cycles. You can use std::weak_ptr or you can access the raw pointers with .get() (just don’t delete them!). Shared pointers are a bit more expensive to access, since they also do a lock to ensure they are thread safe.

Common needs

There are other reasons to use pointers in C++ that are not related to memory, but are caused by other things. Let’s quickly cover them and the better modern (C++17, also available earlier in Boost) solution:

Optional items

// Bad
int* x = int_or_nullptr_func();
if(x)
    use(*x);

// Good
std::optional<int> x = optional_int_func();
if(x) {
  use(*x);
}

Instead of using pointer, you can use std::optional, which is stored entirely on the stack. C++23 is even adding functional methods to std::optional.

Union

If you have several different types, each possibly with different sizes, the heap seems to be a natural place to put them. But you don’t have to with std::variant!

std::variant<int, float> int_or_float;
int_or_float = 12;
int i = std::get<int>(int_or_float);  // i is now 12

The variant is sized to the largest item it can hold. There are several ways to ask it what it holds, or to use generic lambdas (from C++17), overloads, and more to get the contained value easily.

You can put anything inside, and you can put them inside containers like std::vector.

As you might be guessing, std::optional is really just a special case of a two element std::variant with the std::nullopt as one of the possible entries.

Type erasure

What if you don’t know the type you want beforehand? You can’t put that on the stack, obviously, since you don’t know the size, but you still don’t have to resort to void pointers (which are very hard to safely use). Instead, you can use std::any to give you type erasure safely:

std::any a = 1;
std::cout << a.type().name() << " " << std::any_cast<int>(a) << std::endl;

Any also can be “empty”, like std::optional.

Exceptions (bonus)

While you don’t usually use pointers for exceptions, they are a very problematic and have a solution also based on variants in C++23: std::expected.

A new approach to memory

We now have the ability to completely avoid an entire class of memory errors. If we carefully use moves and think about ownership, we can avoid ever having memory at risk of being deleted out from under us or leaking. But the language allows unsafe access too. What if you built a language that didn’t allow unsafe access at all? Someone did; it’s called Rust.

Let’s look at a very simple, invalid Rust program:

Broken

fn main() {
  let s1 = "Hello world".to_string();
  let s2 = s1;
  println!("{} {}", s1, s2);
}

Reference

fn main() {
  let s1 = "Hello world".to_string();
  let s2 = &s1;
  println!("{} {}", s1, s2);
}

Clone

fn main() {
  let s1 = "Hello world".to_string();
  let s2 = s1.clone();
  println!("{} {}", s1, s2);
}

Views

fn main() {
  let s1 = "Hello world";
  let s2 = s1;
  println!("{} {}", s1, s2);
}

A few quick notes on the syntax:

• There’s an actual keyword for function definitions fn, like Python’s def.

• There’s a keyword for variable definitions (let), like JS or Swift.

• Everything is constant by default (C++’s mutable by default is seen as a mistake).

• Types are optional if they can be inferred (though they were included here)

  • If included, types follow the value instead of preceding it, like most modern languages - including Python (see next week!)

• There’s a &'static str type for string literals, and a String type stored on the heap; we explicitly want the String one with to_string().

• println! is a syntactic macro - ignore that, it’s basically just a function. It has a format syntax like Python’s.

Okay, so why does this function fail to compile? let s2 = s1 moves s1 to s2! Since ownership of this heap object is now in s2, we can’t access s1 anymore! You can fix it by using a reference, which means s2 does not own the data, ownership stays with s1. Or you can use .clone() to clone the string (in Rust terms, String implements the Clone trait). Or we could just leave off the .to_string(), which gives us a view &str (think if it like a slice or std::string_view in C++); this doesn’t own memory - it’s just a reference, so is safe to copy.

Feel free to look through the different versions above.

A great read on memory safety is here.

Interfaces

One growing trend in modern programming design is the idea that you can specify a set of requirements to use a class in a stand-alone form, not just through inheritance. In Java this was called Interfaces, C++ this is called Concepts, in Rust this is called Traits, and we’ll see this in Python as Protocols. Since we’ll be go into it in detail next week, we won’t cover it here.

Rust’s implementation is partial parametric polymorphism, which is the other unique thing about Rust (besides the memory model). This allows you to extend an existing type to support a Trait (including built-in types!), and it gives a little more control over what types have what Traits than other languages that just use name matching. Method lookup uses Traits.

A great read on Traits (after you’ve mastered the basics of interfaces next week) is here.

Other patterns

We didn’t cover every pattern (and we can’t), so here are a few more you can look up if you are curious:

• Singleton pattern: There can only be one instance of a class. None, True, and False are singletons in Python.

• Registries: logging uses this design.

• State machine: this is used heavily by Matlab, and sometimes is seen in things mimicking it, like matplotlib’s “easy” interface.

• Factory pattern: We’ve touched on this lightly, classes __init__ method, for example. You can have other factories with @classmethod’s that return new instances. (or static methods in C++, etc)

• Ascync patterns: Lightly touched on during generators.

• Event loop: A common pattern for reacting to multiple possible inputs.