Comparable: add comparison operators and type specialization

[DartBot]

This issue was originally filed by @seaneagan

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It would be nice to be able to compare Comparables using comparison operators. It would also be nice to be able to specialize the types it can be compared to.

Together these would give us:

interface Comparable<T extends Comparable> {
  int compareTo(T other);
  bool operator < (T other);
  bool operator <= (T other);
  bool operator > (T other);
  bool operator >= (T other);
}

There should be mixin(s) (issue #33) to assist in implementing Comparable. Two options for what this mixin would look like:

1. define everything in terms of compareTo:

  bool operator < (T other) => compareTo(other) < 0;
  bool operator <= (T other) => compareTo(other) <= 0;
  bool operator > (T other) => compareTo(other) > 0;
  bool operator >= (T other) => compareTo(other) >= 0;
  bool operator equals (T other) => compareTo(other) == 0;

2. define everything in terms of < and equals:

  int compareTo(T other) => this < other ? -1 : this == other ? 0 : 1;
  bool operator <= (T other) => this < other || this == other;
  bool operator > (T other) => ! (this < other || this == other);
  bool operator >= (T other) => ! this < other;

Of the current interfaces in the core library which extend Comparable, only num currently has comparison operators, Duration, Date, and String do not. They could add them as follows:

interface num extends Comparable<num>
interface Duration extends Comparable<Duration>
interface Date extends Comparable<Date>
interface String extends Comparable<String>

[dgrove]

Added Area-Library, Triaged labels.
Marked this as being blocked by #33.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @tomyeh

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Consistency is important to avoid mistake. It is more important for a script language. All these kind of errors can't be found at the compile time (for example, if Dart VM, such as Dartium, is used).

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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Also, Math.min/max could be generalized to work on all Comparables, by defining Comparable#min/max. The mixin implementations could look like:

T min(T other) => this <= other ? this : other;
T max(T other) => this >= other ? this : other;
// or
T min(T other) => compareTo(other) <= 0 ? this : other;
T max(T other) => compareTo(other) >= 0 ? this : other;

// Strings
'a'.min('b'); // 'a'
'a'.max('b'); // 'b'

// Dates
today.min(yesterday); // yesterday
today.max(yesterday); // today

// Durations
hour.min(second); // second
hour.max(second); // hour

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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and of course:

// nums
2.min(3); // 2
2.max(3); // 3

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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Comparable#compareTo could be removed as well, and <= could instead be used as the default for List#sort (and any where else that comparators are used) whose argument could be a Function which returns bool instead of int, which should have a slight performance advantage. The compareTo-based mixin above though might still be useful when implementing Comparable.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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In addition to min and max, clamp (issue #44) would make sense:

x.clamp(-1, 1);

These could alternatively all be static methods on Comparable if statics were allowed on interfaces (issue #2975 except without the restriction to go through a default class):

Comparable.min(2, 3) // 2
Comparable.max(2, 3) // 3
Comparable.clamp(1, 2, 3) // 2

In this case it would be desirable to have generic methods (issue #254) so that for example in:

var max = Comparable.max<int>(x, y);

it can be checked that x and y are ints, and known that max will be an int.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by [email protected]

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Having comparison operators on the interface is okay; having a mixin is great; but I'd strongly prefer it if the language had builtin support for Comparable so you don't even have to write these operators (as the D programming language allows).

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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With the current mixin proposal:

http://news.dartlang.org/2012/08/darts-modest-proposal-for-mixins.html

this might look like:

class Comparable<T extends Comparable<T>> {
  int compareTo(T other);
  bool operator < (T other) => compareTo(other) < 0;
  bool operator <= (T other) => compareTo(other) <= 0;
  bool operator > (T other) => compareTo(other) > 0;
  bool operator >= (T other) => compareTo(other) >= 0;
  bool operator == (T other) => compareTo(other) == 0;
}

class Date mixin Comparable<Date> {
  int compareTo(T other) => millisecondsSinceEpoch.compareTo(other.millisecondsSinceEpoch);
  //...
}

class Duration mixin Comparable<Duration> {
  int compareTo(T other) => inMilliseconds.compareTo(other.inMilliseconds);
  //...
}

[alan-knight]

Marked this as being blocked by #33.
Unmarked this as being blocked by #33.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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Including issue #3176 it could be:

class Comparable<T extends Comparable<T>> {
  int compareTo(T other);
  bool operator < (T other) => compareTo(other) < 0;
  bool operator <= (T other) => compareTo(other) <= 0;
  bool operator > (T other) => compareTo(other) > 0;
  bool operator >= (T other) => compareTo(other) >= 0;
  bool operator == (T other) => compareTo(other) == 0;
  T min(T other) => this <= other ? this : other; // alternatively "boundAbove", "minimize", etc.
  T max(T other) => this >= other ? this : other; // alternatively "boundBelow", "maximize", etc.
  T clamp(T min, T max) => this.max(min).min(max);
}

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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The only place I don't think all the extra methods make sense is String due to lexicographic ordering not being a "quantitative" ordering, so I think separate Comparable and Quantity interfaces would make sense:

abstract class Comparable<T extends Comparable<T>> {
  int compareTo(T other);
}

abstract class Quantity<T extends Quantity<T>> extends Comparable<T> {
  bool operator < (T other) => compareTo(other) < 0;
  bool operator <= (T other) => compareTo(other) <= 0;
  bool operator > (T other) => compareTo(other) > 0;
  bool operator >= (T other) => compareTo(other) >= 0;
  bool operator == (T other) => compareTo(other) == 0;
  T min(T other) => this <= other ? this : other; // alternatively "boundAbove", "minimize", etc.
  T max(T other) => this >= other ? this : other; // alternatively "boundBelow", "maximize", etc.
  T clamp(T min, T max) => this.max(min).min(max);
}

class String implements Comparable<String> ...

class num mixin Quantity<num> ...
class Duration mixin Quantity<Duration> ...
class Date mixin Quantity<Date> ...
// etc.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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Now with M4, it looks like DateTime will never get comparison operators (since it already has isSameMomentAs, isBefore, isAfter), but it will be Comparable. So does that mean Comparable will not get comparison operators ?

[floitschG]

There are no plans to make the Comparable interface include <, <=, >= and >. One of the most important implementors (double) doesn't have a correspondence between compareTo and operators.
Also, just because two instances can be ordered, doesn't mean that comparison operators make sense on them. In particular the fact that the comparison operators need to play nicely with "==" makes it difficult/impossible to implement. A compareTo function might only take one field into account, but the "==" uses many more fields.
DateTime is an example.

However, it is conceivable to create mixins that adds these methods (or inversely create a compareTo from the operators).

Example:
class OperatorComparableMixin {
  int compareTo(other) => this < other ? -1 : (other < this ? 1 : 0);
  operator <(other);
  operator <=(other) => !(other < this);
  operator >(other) => other < this;
  operator >=(other) => !(this < other)
}

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Added NotPlanned label.

[DartBot]

This comment was originally written by @seaneagan

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double has a correspondence between compareTo and comparison operators, it's just special cased for NaN, right? That wouldn't prevent adding operators to Comparable.

The reason DateTime is an issue is that it conflates a moment in time with a calendar/timzone representation thereof. I presume two separate classes was deemed too complicated.

I still think it would be nice to have the Quantity interface/mixin above and for num/int/double/Duration to implement it.

[floitschG]

Since double special cases for some values (NaN and -0.0) there is no bijection. If a sort-function expects a Comparable it would not be clear how it sorts.

Yes. DateTime is actually a ZonedDateTime. However splitting DateTime into different entities wouldn't make this issue easier. As a developer you want to work with ZonedDateTimes since that's the most useful. Otherwise you could just use the millisecondsSinceEpoch.