I imported the math library in my program, and I was trying to find the minimum of three numbers in the following way:
v1[j+1] = math.Min(v1[j]+1, math.Min(v0[j+1]+1, v0[j]+cost))
where v1 is declared as:
t := "stackoverflow"
v1 := make([]int, len(t)+1)
However, when I run my program I get the following error:
./levenshtein_distance.go:36: cannot use int(v0[j + 1] + 1) (type int) as type float64 in argument to math.Min
I thought it was weird because I have another program where I write
fmt.Println(math.Min(2,3))
and that program outputs 2 without complaining.
so I ended up casting the values as float64, so that math.Min could work:
v1[j+1] = math.Min(float64(v1[j]+1), math.Min(float64(v0[j+1]+1), float64(v0[j]+cost)))
With this approach, I got the following error:
./levenshtein_distance.go:36: cannot use math.Min(int(v1[j] + 1), math.Min(int(v0[j + 1] + 1), int(v0[j] + cost))) (type float64) as type int in assignment
so to get rid of the problem, I just casted the result back to int
I thought this was extremely inefficient and hard to read:
v1[j+1] = int(math.Min(float64(v1[j]+1), math.Min(float64(v0[j+1]+1), float64(v0[j]+cost))))
I also wrote a small minInt function, but I think this should be unnecessary because the other programs that make use of math.Min work just fine when taking integers, so I concluded this has to be a problem of my program and not the library per se.
Is there anything that I'm doing terrible wrong?
Here's a program that you can use to reproduce the issues above, line 36 specifically: package main
import (
"math"
)
func main() {
LevenshteinDistance("stackoverflow", "stackexchange")
}
func LevenshteinDistance(s string, t string) int {
if s == t {
return 0
}
if len(s) == 0 {
return len(t)
}
if len(t) == 0 {
return len(s)
}
v0 := make([]int, len(t)+1)
v1 := make([]int, len(t)+1)
for i := 0; i < len(v0); i++ {
v0[i] = i
}
for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
v1[0] = i + 1
for j := 0; j < len(t); j++ {
cost := 0
if s[i] != t[j] {
cost = 1
}
v1[j+1] = int(math.Min(float64(v1[j]+1), math.Min(float64(v0[j+1]+1), float64(v0[j]+cost))))
}
for j := 0; j < len(v0); j++ {
v0[j] = v1[j]
}
}
return v1[len(t)]
}
Nope, I think writing something like that is fine: for instance, the stdlib's sort.go does it near the top of the file:
func min(a, b int) int {
if a < b {
return a
}
return b
}
Your math.Min(2, 3) worked because numeric constants in Go are untyped. Besides just avoiding unnecessary casting, it seems best practice not to use float functions for integers because not every int64 has a precise float64 representation (ones above 2^53 don't, specifically).
For example,
package main
import "fmt"
func min(x, y int) int {
if x < y {
return x
}
return y
}
func main() {
t := "stackoverflow"
v0 := make([]int, len(t)+1)
v1 := make([]int, len(t)+1)
cost := 1
j := 0
v1[j+1] = min(v1[j]+1, min(v0[j+1]+1, v0[j]+cost))
fmt.Println(v1[j+1])
}
Output:
1
There is no built-in min or max function for integers, but it’s simple to write your own. Thanks to support for variadic functions we can even compare more integers with just one call:
func MinOf(vars ...int) int {
min := vars[0]
for _, i := range vars {
if min > i {
min = i
}
}
return min
}
Usage:
MinOf(3, 9, 6, 2)
Similarly here is the max function:
func MaxOf(vars ...int) int {
max := vars[0]
for _, i := range vars {
if max < i {
max = i
}
}
return max
}