I've called upon what I've learned so far and still can't fix this so decided to come here.
A BasicBlock object is referenced by an integer and holds references to the 'addresses' of more blocks in a list. I want to obtain the addresses that they hold reference to and i thought to do this recursively. It is possible for one BasicBlock to hold reference to 0 or more other blocks.
The below recursive function getFunctionReferences keeps returning a stack overflow error, yet manages to work sometimes.
Map<Integer,BasicBlock> blockList blockList = new TreeMap<Integer,BasicBlock>();
public HashSet<Integer> getAssociatedAddresses(int function) {
HashSet<Integer> blockAddresses = new HashSet<Integer>();
getFunctionReferences(this.blockList.get(function),blockAddresses);
return blockAddresses;
}
private void getFunctionReferences(BasicBlock block, HashSet<Integer> blockAddresses){
for (int x : block.getAddressReferenceList()) {
blockAddresses.add(x);
getFunctionReferences(this.blockList.get(x), blockAddresses);
}
}
I know that I am doing something wrong with this call, especially as there is no base case. But I don't know how to deal with recursion when it is in a loop like this....nor do I know a suitable base case.
Help massively appreciated.
Thanks
If you have cycles (for example block 1 references block 2 which references block 3 which references block 1), you'll get infinite recursion leading to StackOverflowError.
To avoid that, you can take advantage of the HashSet of visited blocks which you maintain. You can simply check if a block was already visited and avoid making another recursive call if it was:
private void getFunctionReferences(BasicBlock block, HashSet<Integer> blockAddresses){
for (int x : block.getAddressReferenceList()) {
if (blockAddresses.add(x)) { // only make a recursive call if x wasn't already
// in the Set
getFunctionReferences(this.blockList.get(x), blockAddresses);
}
}
}
Related
Here is my Java code:
static Map<BigInteger, Integer> cache = new ConcurrentHashMap<>();
static Integer minFinder(BigInteger num) {
if (num.equals(BigInteger.ONE)) {
return 0;
}
if (num.mod(BigInteger.valueOf(2)).equals(BigInteger.ZERO)) {
//focus on stuff thats happening inside this block, since with given inputs it won't reach last return
return 1 + cache.computeIfAbsent(num.divide(BigInteger.valueOf(2)),
n -> minFinder(n));
}
return 1 + Math.min(cache.computeIfAbsent(num.subtract(BigInteger.ONE), n -> minFinder(n)),
cache.computeIfAbsent(num.add(BigInteger.ONE), n -> minFinder(n)));
}
I tried to memoize a function that returns a minimum number of actions such as division by 2, subtract by one or add one.
The problem I'm facing is when I call it with smaller inputs such as:
minFinder(new BigInteger("32"))
it works, but with bigger values like:
minFinder(new BigInteger("64"))
It throws a Recursive Update exception.
Is there any way to increase recursion size to prevent this exception or any other way to solve this?
From the API docs of Map.computeIfAbsent():
The mapping function should not modify this map during computation.
The API docs of ConcurrentHashMap.computeIfAbsent() make that stronger:
The mapping function must not modify this map during computation.
(Emphasis added)
You are violating that by using your minFinder() method as the mapping function. That it seems nevertheless to work for certain inputs is irrelevant. You need to find a different way to achieve what you're after.
Is there any way to increase recursion size to prevent this exception or any other way to solve this?
You could avoid computeIfAbsent() and instead do the same thing the old-school way:
BigInteger halfNum = num.divide(BigInteger.valueOf(2));
BigInteger cachedValue = cache.get(halfNum);
if (cachedValue == null) {
cachedValue = minFinder(halfNum);
cache.put(halfNum, cachedValue);
}
return 1 + cachedValue;
But that's not going to be sufficient if the computation loops. You could perhaps detect that by putting a sentinel value into the map before you recurse, so that you can recognize loops.
I know this question has been answered already via numerous methods:
Set maximum stack size (-Xss20m)
Avoid the test what so ever - if you need a bigger recursion the problem is within the program.
Those methods are great, but I know there is a problem in my code, and I want to specifically limit (to a small number e.g. 5) the recursion depth, to test whether this is the problem.
Is there a method, like the sys.setrecursionlimit in python?
The least invasive "Manual" way to do this (also the most hacky) is probably to create a static variable in your class that is having the recursion issue. When you enter the recursive method use it to count the recursion depth (by adding or subtracting) and when you exit, reverse what you did upon entry.
This isn't great but it is a lot better than trying to set a stack depth (Nearly any system call in java will blow through 5 levels of stack without even blinking).
If you don't use a static you may end up having to pass your stack depth variable through quite a few classes, it's very invasive to the rest of your code.
As an alternative I suggest you let it fail "normally" and throw the exception then meditate upon the stack trace for a while--they are really informative and will probably lead you to the source of your problem more quickly than anything else.
static int maxDepth = 5;
public void recursiveMethod() {
if(maxDepth-- == 0)
throw new IllegalStateException("Stack Overflow");
recursiveMethod();
maxDepth++;
}
Create this class:
public class RecursionLimiter {
public static int maxLevel = 10;
public static void emerge() {
if (maxLevel == 0)
return;
try {
throw new IllegalStateException("Too deep, emerging");
} catch (IllegalStateException e) {
if (e.getStackTrace().length > maxLevel + 1)
throw e;
}
}
}
Then import static and insert emerge() call into the beginning of any method in your code that can be deeply recursive. You can adjust maximum allowed recursion level via the maxLevel variable. The emerge() procedure will interrupt execution on a level greater than the value of that variable. You can switch off this behaviour by setting maxLevel to 0. This solution is thread-safe because it doesn't use any counter at all.
You give a grid (4x4 here). you need to find out the total no of unique paths from (0,0) to (4,4). main() call a function pathify for this. It finds the possible "next steps" and calls it again. When (4,4) is reached noOfPaths++; is supposed to execute. This doesn't happen and I can't find the problem.
import java.util.ArrayList;
public class NoOfPaths {
static int xRows = 4;
static int yColumns = 4;
static int noOfPaths = 0;
/*A robot is located in the upper-left corner of a 4×4 grid.
* The robot can move either up, down, left, or right,
* but cannot go to the same location twice.
* The robot is trying to reach the lower-right corner of the grid.
* Your task is to find out the number of unique ways to reach the destination.
**/
static ArrayList validNeighbours (int x,int y, ArrayList visited) {
ArrayList valid = new ArrayList();
if((x+1 <= xRows) && !visited.contains(((x+1)*10)+y) ) {
valid.add(((x+1)*10)+y);
}
if((x-1 >= 0) && !visited.contains(((x-1)*10)+y) ) {
valid.add(((x-1)*10)+y);
}
if((y+1 <= yColumns) && !visited.contains(x*10+y+1) ) {
valid.add(x*10+y+1);
}
if((y-1 >= 0) && !visited.contains(x*10+y-1) ) {
valid.add(x*10+y-1);
}
return valid;
}
static void pathify(int x,int y, ArrayList alreadyVisited) {
if(x == xRows && y == yColumns) {
noOfPaths++;
} else {
alreadyVisited.add(x*10+y);
ArrayList callAgain = new ArrayList();
callAgain = validNeighbours(x,y,alreadyVisited);
for (int t=0,temp; t<callAgain.size(); t++) {
temp=(int) callAgain.get(t);
pathify(temp/10, temp%10, alreadyVisited);
}
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
ArrayList alreadyVisited = new ArrayList();
pathify(0, 0, alreadyVisited);
System.out.println(noOfPaths);
}
}
The error is in how you're handling alreadyVisited. The first time pathify is called, this list will contain only the initial square (0,0), which is fine. Here's the important part of your code:
for (int t=0,temp; t<callAgain.size(); t++) {
temp=(int) callAgain.get(t);
pathify(temp/10, temp%10, alreadyVisited);
}
You've found the neighbors of the initial cell. Your code will pick the first neighbor; then it will find paths starting with that neighbor, and the recursive calls to pathify will add cells to alreadyVisited.
Now, after all the recursive calls come back, you're ready to find cells starting with the second neighbor of the initial cell. But you have a problem: alreadyVisited still has all the cells it's collected from the paths it found starting with the second neighbor. So you won't find all possible paths starting with the second neighbor; you won't find any path that includes any cell in any path you've previously found. This isn't what you want, since you only want to avoid visiting the same cell in each path--you don't want to avoid visiting the same cell in all your previous paths. (I simplified this a little bit. In reality, the problem will start occurring deeper down the recursive stack, and you won't even find all the paths beginning with the first neighbor.)
When implementing a recursive algorithm, I've found that it's generally a bad idea to keep an intermediate data structure that is shared by recursive invocations that will be modified by those invocations. In this case, that's the list alreadyVisited. The problem is that when an invocation deeper down the stack modifies the structure, this affects invocations further up, because they will see the modifications after the deeper invocations return, which is basically data they need changing underneath them. (I'm not talking about a collection that is used to hold a list of results, if the list is basically write-only.) The way to avoid it here is that instead of adding to alreadyVisited, you could create a clone of this list and then add to it. That way, a deeper invocation can be sure that it's not impacting the shallower invocations by changing their data. That is, instead of
alreadyVisited.add(x*10+y);
write
alreadyVisited = [make a copy of alreadyVisited];
alreadyVisited.add(x*10+y);
The add will modify a new list, not the list that other invocations are using. (Personally, I'd declare a new variable such as newAlreadyVisited, since I don't really like modifying parameters, for readability reasons.)
This may seem inefficient. It will definitely use more memory (although the memory should be garbage-collectible pretty quickly). But trying to share a data structure between recursive invocations is very, very difficult to do correctly. It can be done if you're very careful about cleaning up the changes and restoring the structure to what it was when the method began. That might be necessary if the structure is something like a large tree, making it unfeasible to copy for every invocation. But it can take a lot of skill to make things work.
EDIT: I tested it and it appears to work: 12 if xRows=yColumns=2, 8512 if both are 4 (is that correct?). Another approach: instead of copying the list, I tried
alreadyVisited.remove((Object)(x*10+y));
at the end of the method ((Object) is needed so that Java doesn't think you're removing at an index) and that gave me the same results. If you do that, you'll make sure that alreadyVisited is the same when pathify returns as it was when it started. But I want to emphasize that I don't recommend this "cleanup" approach unless you really know what you're doing.
Is there a way to return some value from within a for loop without jumping out of the loop?
I am implementing a static analysis tool where I have to analyze a list of methods (CFGs) in a for loop. The size of CFG list is not known in advance. Each method in the for loop has to return some value. As asked above, is there a way to do it in a loop without breaking the loop? One possible alternative comes in mind is that I can unroll the loop, assuming the maximum list size could be some fixed value. But this does not solve the problem completely. Any help would be appreciated.
code looks like below.
for(CFG cfg: cfgList)
{
val = analyze(cfg);
return val; //I want for loop not to stop here.
}
P.S. I cannot store the values in a list to return values later.
Edit1:
For example, consider following statements.
call method1();
st2;
st3;
...
This method1() can be any of five different methods. For all five possible options, I want to analyze each of them, return their values and analyze rest of the statements accordingly. So, I would analyze these 5 methods as below.
call method1-option1();
st2;
st3;
...
call method1-option2();
st2;
st3;
...
call method1-option3();
st2;
st3;
...
Hope, it helps in understanding the question.
No you can not return value from loop without jumping out of it. According to your need you have to save value in other list and you can return that list after finishing the loop.
In Java 8, you can do:
Iterator<AnalysisResult> lazyAnalysisResults = cfgList.stream()
.map(cfg -> analyze(cfg))
.iterator();
And then the Iterator will supply new analyzed results one at a time, without you needing to collect them all into a list first.
Prior to Java 8, if you want your transformation to be lazy, the best you can do is to implement an Iterator yourself:
public final class AnalyzingIterator extends Iterator<AnalysisResult> {
private final Iterator<CFG> iter;
public AnalyzingIterator(Iterator<CFG> iter) {
this.iter = iter;
}
#Override public boolean hasNext() {
return iter.hasNext();
}
#Override public AnalysisResult next() {
return analyze(iter.next());
}
#Override public boolean remove() {
throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
}
}
If you don't want to store results in a List and return it all together you can use callback mechanism.
Use analyze() to start a new thread passing cfg as well as reference to this. When processing is over make that processing thread call a callback method on your current instance / thread passing the analyzed value. Continue to do whatever you intend to do with this returned value in the callback method. And you don't have to alter your for loop.
I was curious if, in Java, you could create a piece of code that keeps iterating a piece of code without the use of a for or while loop, and if so, what methods could be used to solve this?
Look at recursion. A recursive function is a function which calls itself until a base case is reached. An example is the factorial function:
int fact(int n)
{
int result;
if(n==1)
return 1;
result = fact(n-1) * n;
return result;
}
You could use the Java 8 Streams methods for iterating over the elements of a Collection. Among the methods you can use are filtering methods (get all the elements of a collection that satisfy some conditions), mapping methods (map a Collection of one type to a Collection of another type) and aggregation methods (like computing the sum of all the elements in a Collection, based on some integer member of the Element stored in the collection).
For example - Stream forEach :
List<Element> = new ArrayList<Element>();
...
list.stream().forEach (element -> System.out.println(element));
Or you can do it without a Stream :
List<Element> = new ArrayList<Element>();
...
list.forEach (element -> System.out.println(element));
Another variant of recursion:
public class LoopException extends Exception {
public LoopException(int i, int max) throws LoopException {
System.out.println( "Loop variable: "+i);
if (i < max)
throw new LoopException( i+1, max );
}
}
Of course this is just a bit of fun, don't ever do it for real.
Java does not have a goto statement (that's a lie), so that way is a dead end.
But you could always make a piece of code endlessly iterate using recursion. Old factorial function seems to be the favorite, but since it is not an infinite loop, I will go for this simple function:
int blowMyStack(int a) {
return blowMyStack(a + 1);
}
There will be many ways to do this using various features of the language. But it always falls to an underlying recursion.
In case you're referring of something like C's goto, the answer is no.
In other cases, you can use recursive functions.