@pure macro

General Usage
1

What does @pure do to a function? Is it faster in some cases?

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2

I got rid of the “First Steps” tag. This is not something that should be discussed as a first step into Julia. This is very much digging deeper.

An @pure function is a function whose output is completely determined by its input. This means very many things. For one, no globals involved. Secondly, no pointers, since they are different in each session (this means no arrays). So something is @pure essentially if it’s a function of symbols, numbers, and booleans (other immutables, bitstypes, etc. which avoid pointers) that spits out some type which is (or only contains) these things.

It can make things faster. More correctly, it can help with inference. For example:

immutable Discrete{apply_map,scale_by_time} end
Discrete(;apply_map=false,scale_by_time=false) = Discrete{apply_map,scale_by_time}()

in this case, since the booleans are runtime variables, this will not actually be able to infer the output type without @pure because the output type depends on the type parameters, and the type parameters depend on the runtime values of the variables apply_map and scale_by_time.

julia> @code_warntype Discrete()
Variables:
  #self#::Type{Discrete}

Body:
  begin
      return ((Core.apply_type)(Main.Discrete,false,false)::Type{_<:Discrete})()::Discrete{apply_map,scale_by_time}
  end::Discrete{apply_map,scale_by_time}

However, with @pure the compiler does something like compile a separate version for each of the input types, and it’s then able to properly infer the output type.

immutable Discrete{apply_map,scale_by_time} end
Base.@pure Discrete(;apply_map=false,scale_by_time=false) = Discrete{apply_map,scale_by_time}()


julia> @code_warntype Discrete()
Variables:
  #self#::Type{Discrete}

Body:
  begin
      return $(QuoteNode(Discrete{false,false}()))
  end::Discrete{false,false}

So in some very specific case, Base.@pure will help inference.

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Just as a counterbalance, improper @pure annotations can introduce bugs. The optimizations it enables rely on an extremely strict definition of pure. It really should be named something like @hyperpure. Some of the restrictions include:

  • It must always return exactly (===) the same result for a given input. Watch out for mutable types. I think constant globals are okay, though.
  • The function it’s used on cannot be further extended by other methods after it gets called.
  • It cannot recurse.
  • It’s undocumented and not exported (for good reason), but this means the complete list of preconditions is really only in a few people’s heads.
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4

This really should appear in the documentation (along with the appropriate warnings about use). I have seen it around, and never known what the hell it did.

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5

@mbauman about mutable types: it’s okay to use mutable types in the intermediate computation if the output is immutable, right? The case I am thinking of is building an SVector for the result, but using a Vector to internally build that. Since

using StaticArrays
a = @SArray [1,2,3]
b = @SArray [1,2,3]
a === b # true

it seems like it would work, but I just wanted to double check. If so, that makes it much easier to build type-inferrable SArrays in functions.

If that’s the case, then I believe a function like this should be Base.@pure?

https://github.com/shivin9/PDEOperators.jl/blob/master/src/fornberg.jl#L34

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I’m on a quest to understand @pure. I saw this, but then looking through AxisArrays I saw:

@pure samesym{n1,n2}(::Type{Axis{n1}}, ::Type{Axis{n2}}) = Val{n1==n2}()
samesym{n1,n2,T1,T2}(::Type{Axis{n1,T1}}, ::Type{Axis{n2,T2}}) = samesym(Axis{n1},Axis{n2})
samesym{n1,n2}(::Type{Axis{n1}}, ::Axis{n2}) = samesym(Axis{n1}, Axis{n2})
samesym{n1,n2}(::Axis{n1}, ::Type{Axis{n2}}) = samesym(Axis{n1}, Axis{n2})
samesym{n1,n2}(::Axis{n1}, ::Axis{n2}) = samesym(Axis{n1}, Axis{n2})

Here the function is extended, but none of the following methods conflict with the @pure one. Is it more correct to say that the method it’s used on cannot be overloaded?

7

I think the key thing here is

after it gets called

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8

Okay – seeing this, I wanted to create a type-stable function for PCA using SizedArrays.
But it hasn’t worked in a simple test case so far:

julia> using StaticArrays

julia> p = 30; n = 40;

julia> S = randn(n, p) |> x -> x' * x;

julia> eigS = eigfact(S);

julia> λs = SVector{p}(cumsum(eigS.values));

julia> λs /= λs[end];

julia> E = SizedArray{Tuple{p,p}}(eigS.vectors);

julia> Base.@pure deduce_rank(x::SVector{p,<:Real}, ::Type{Val{g}}) where {p,g} = Val{p-searchsortedlast(x, 1-g)}
deduce_rank (generic function with 1 method)

julia> function f(x::SizedArray{Tuple{p,p}}, ::Type{Val{q}}) where {p,q}
           SizedArray{Tuple{p,q}}(x[:,p-q+1:end])
       end
f (generic function with 1 method)

julia> function h(X::SizedArray, x::SVector,::Type{Val{g}}) where g
           v = deduce_rank(x, Val{g})
           f(X, v)
       end
h (generic function with 1 method)

julia> h(E, λs, Val{0.9});

julia> typeof(ans)
StaticArrays.SizedArray{Tuple{30,18},Float64,2,2}

julia> @code_warntype h(E, λs, Val{0.9})
Variables:
  #self#::#h
  X::StaticArrays.SizedArray{Tuple{30,30},Float64,2,2}
  x::SVector{30,Float64}
  #unused#::Any
  v::Type{Val{_}} where _

Body:
  begin 
      $(Expr(:inbounds, false))
      # meta: location REPL[8] deduce_rank 1
      SSAValue(0) = $(Expr(:invoke, MethodInstance for searchsortedlast(::SVector{30,Float64}, ::Float64, ::Base.Order.ForwardOrdering), :(Base.Sort.searchsortedlast), :(x), :((Base.sub_float)((Base.sitofp)(Float64, 1)::Float64, 0.9)::Float64), :(Base.Sort.Forward)))
      # meta: pop location
      $(Expr(:inbounds, :pop))
      v::Type{Val{_}} where _ = (Core.apply_type)(Main.Val, (Base.sub_int)(30, SSAValue(0))::Int64)::Type{Val{_}} where _ # line 3:
      return (Main.f)(X::StaticArrays.SizedArray{Tuple{30,30},Float64,2,2}, v::Type{Val{_}} where _)::Any
  end::Any

Inference on deduce rank failed.
Any suggestions?

I have a function that does something like this before doing >1,000 matrix operations with the result.
The cost of a dynamic dispatch is small in comparison to the benefit of using a sized array.
But, would be great to find out a way to dodge the dynamic dispatch too.
StaticArrays may not be sufficiently pure?

EDIT: You (and dextorious) showed me how to do those matrix operations much more rapidly with BLAS for anything but smallish dimensions (for which there’s no need for LDR).
So I don’t need this, but still interesting.

9

After defining @pure f(::T) and calling it, can I define f(::R) if R isn’t a subtype of T?

10

please see All things considered, @pure is not for use outside of Base.

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