Hello everyone, I am currently trying to write a program using WebDriver.jl. My functions act on the ‘Element’ type of WebDriver ( WebDriver.jl/06_Element.jl at master · Nosferican/WebDriver.jl · GitHub ). I am mainly using two functions, one to identify the ‘Elements’ on the page I want to process an…

This sounds like a use case for dispatching on a value: Types · The Julia Language Have you considered this? Of course the implementation differences need to be … well,… implemented.

I would avoid using if to test for classes but instead write functions depending on types. Something like this: struct MyClass end struct MyOtherClass end ... # identify elements and map to class function element_to_struct(el) if el == ... return MyClass elseif ... return…

I am more or less saying the same thing as above, but is this the type of behavior you want? julia> abstract type Class1 end julia> abstract type Class2 end julia> struct Type1 <: Class1 end julia> struct Type2 <: Class2 end julia> do_stuff(x::Class1) = "doing stuff with something of Class1" do…

Thanks for all the suggestions. Dispatching on values seems helpful and it is my mistake that I have not realized it could be applied to my case when I read the docs. Thanks for pointing that out @oheil . I can totally get behind the logic of @ZettEff s approach as this was very much along the line…

[image] DorianT: I am not yet sure why I would need Type1, Type2, etc. next to Class1, Class2 Sorry, I am not sure either. I’ve shown that because the terminology “class” is usually associated with object-oriented programming, where types of “things” belong to different “classes”. The most si…

You shouldn’t convert elements to structs in a single function, because it is literally going to be a type unstable function. On a general note, this kind of task is complicated because it is basically runtime dispatch and runtime dispatch is slow. It’s a pity, but big fat if is the best solution f…

[image] Skoffer: On a general note, this kind of task is complicated because it is basically runtime dispatch and runtime dispatch is slow. @skoffer raises an important point, but it may be that the run time dispatch performance is not important for your application, and in this case you can…

Thanks for the argument on not converting elements to structs. Could you explain what exactly is the problem with this approach in some more detail?

This is one of the threads discussing that: Performance drawback with subtyping - #6 by lmiq and other threads are linked in that one. @skoffer usually post the best answers there (and I am struggling to understand what is going on the middle).

Using multiple dispatch and the type system correctly

New to Julia

Skoffer May 17, 2021, 1:46pm 12

Maybe this topic can be of interest: How to work with type unstable functions? I think it’s rather similar to what you are doing and it has some explanations.

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Using multiple dispatch and the type system correctly

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