Playing with F# types and getting lost

Question

I have been doing a little reading on F# and decided to give it a try. I started with a somewhat involved example and I came up with and got lost immediately. I wonder if someone can share some thoughts on it.

I wanted to write a method called ComparisonStrategy<'T> that returns an instance of IEqualityComparer<'T>. It that takes in a variable length of ComparisonWhichAndHow<'T> instances. The type ComparisonWhichAndHow<'T> can either be:

1. One function of type ('T -> *), which is a method that selects a single field to compare
2. a 2-tuple of ('T -> 'U, IEqualityComparer<'U>) if you don't want the default Equals or GetHashCode to be used on 'U.

I have tried to draw this down on visual studio for a while now, but I can't even get the function declaration part right. I am somewhat positive I would be able to implement the method body if I can just get past this, but seems like I can't.

Edited:

This is the code I have tried so far.

I am trying to achieve the 2 following things.

1. Come up with a generic way of generating a equal method for each object.
2. Sometimes some business operations might require comparing some fields of 2 objects, and some fields of their children. Not a full comparison. I am trying to make writing those code more concise and simple

This is what I have so far:

module Failed =
    open System.Collections.Generic
    open System

    type ComparsionOption<'T, 'U> =
        | Compare of ('T -> 'U)
        | CompareWith of ('T -> 'U) * IEqualityComparer<'U>

    // TO USE: [<ParamArray>] 
    // TODO: this method returns a dummy for now
    let CompareStrategy (opts : ComparsionOption<'T, _> array) =
        EqualityComparer<'T>.Default

    // How it's used

    type Person(name : string, id : Guid) = 
        member this.Name = name
        member this.ID = id

    let fullCompare : EqualityComparer<Person> =
        CompareStrategy [|Compare(fun (p : Person) -> p.Name);
                            CompareWith((fun (p : Person) -> p.ID), EqualityComparer<Guid>.Default)|] // error here

Answer 1

Looking at the problem from another perspective, it looks like you want to be able to construct objects that perform comparison in two different ways (which you specified) and then compose them.

Let's start by looking at the two ways to build an object that performs comparison. You can represent both by IEqualityComparer<'T>. The first one takes a function 'T -> Something and performs comparison on the result. You can define a function like this:

/// Creates a comparer for 'T values based on a predicate that 
/// selects some value 'U from any 'T value (e.g. a field)
let standardComparer (f:'T -> 'U) = 
  { new IEqualityComparer<'T> with
      member x.Equals(a, b) = 
        (f a).Equals(b)  // Call 'f' on the value & test equality of results
      member x.GetHashCode(a) = 
        (f a).GetHashCode() } // Call 'f' and get hash code of the result

The function is 'T -> 'U using F# generics, so you can project fields of any type (the type just has to be comparable). The second primitive function also takes 'T -> 'U, but it also takes a comparer for 'U values instead of using the default:

/// Creates a comparer for 'T values based on a predicate & comparer
let equalityComparer (f:'T -> 'U) (comparer:IEqualityComparer<'U>) = 
  { new IEqualityComparer<'T> with
      member x.Equals(a, b) = 
        comparer.Equals(f a, f b) // Project values using 'f' and use 'comparer'
      member x.GetHashCode(a) =
        comparer.GetHashCode(f a) } // Similar - use 'f' and 'comparer'

Now you're saying that you'd like to take a sequence of values created in one of the two above ways to build a single comparison strategy. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that. Do you want two objects to be equal when all the specified comparers report them as equal?

Assuming that is the case, you can write a function that combines two IEqualityComparer<'T> values and reports them as equal when both comparers report them as equal like this:

/// Creates a new IEqualityComparer that is based on two other comparers
/// Two objects are equal if they are equal using both comparers.
let combineComparers (comp1:IEqualityComparer<'T>) (comp2:IEqualityComparer<'T>) =
  { new IEqualityComparer<'T> with
      member x.Equals(a, b) =
        comp1.Equals(a, b) && comp2.Equals(a, b) // Combine results using &&
      member x.GetHashCode(a) =
        // Get hash code of a tuple composed by two hash codes
        hash (comp1.GetHashCode(a), comp2.GetHashCode(a)) }

This is essenitally implementing all the functionality that you need. If you have some object Person, you can construct comparer like this:

// Create a list of primitive comparers that compare 
// Name, Age and ID using special 'idComparer'
let comparers =
  [ standardComparer (fun (p:Person) -> p.Name);
    standardComparer (fun (p:Person) -> p.Age);
    equalityComparer (fun (p:Person) -> p.ID) idComparer ]

// Create a single comparer that combines all of them...
let comparePerson = comparers |> Seq.reduce combineComparers

You could wrap this in a more object-oriented interface using overloaded methods etc., but I think that the above sample shows all the important components that you'll need in the solution.

BTW: In the example, I was using F# object expressions to implement all the functions.