Alternative for showing Union{T, Missings.Missing}?

General Usage
1

Like others I’m somewhat bothered by the long type signatures caused by missing data.

julia> using Missings
julia> A = [0.0+0im, missing]
2-element Array{Union{Complex{Float64}, Missings.Missing},1}:
 0.0+0.0im  
     missing

So I coded an alternative.

#  ⍰  \APLboxquestion<tab>
using Missings

for typ in [:Int64, :Float64, :AbstractString]
    typq = Symbol(typ,'⍰')
    @eval const $(typq) = Union{$(typ), Missing}
end
const Complex⍰{Float64} = Union{Complex{Float64}, Missings.Missing}

Base.show(io::IO, ::Type{Union{T, Missings.Missing}}) where T = begin
    parms = isempty(T.parameters) ? "" : string('{', join(T.parameters,','), '}')
    print(io, T.name.name, '⍰', parms)
end

Now I can write:

julia> [1.0+0im, missing]
2-element Array{Complex⍰{Float64},1}:
 1.0+0.0im  
     missing

julia> Int64⍰[1,2]
2-element Array{Int64⍰,1}:
 1
 2

Are there reasons not to do this?

1 Like
2

DataFrames could use better ways of printing nothing and missing. Perhaps ⍰ is too similar to generic unicode errors, but this is a good idea.