Override __eq__ methods of Node and other UXsim object?

[toruseo]

Currently we can specify Node (or Link, Vehicle) by Node object itself or its name which is str. This is sometimes confusing and causes a bug. It may be possible to solve this issue by overriding __eq__ method (==) properly so that something like node == "node_name" holds true if node.name = "node_name".

Also, it will be great if we can use Node object and node name as a dictionary key interchangeably.

But I am not familiar to overriding __eq__ method, so this requires some study.

[EwoutH]

I have found it confusing at times that the Node id and name are used in different situations. I would suggest always using the id in UXsim internally, and leaving the name just for something the user can use to track different nodes.

We recently had a similar discussion over at Mesa, it might be interesting:

• Automate and enforce unique unique_id in Agents projectmesa/mesa#2213
• track unique_id automatically projectmesa/mesa#2260

[toruseo]

yes, that is also confusing. Refactoring the internal code will be difficult, but let me think if there are feasible solutions.

Thanks for the info too. It is interesting that many people are facing similar issues.

[toruseo]

I have tried the following functions. It worked well for most of the cases. However, it turned out that it causes unexpected, very counter intuitive errors in some cases. There must be workarounds, but I now believe modifying these fundamental functions just for convenience is not very wise. Therefore, I abandon this plan

    def __eq__(self, other):
        """
        Override `==` operator to compare objects by name as well as object itself.
        """
        if isinstance(other, str):
            return self.name == other
        elif isinstance(other, Vehicle):
            return self.name == other.name
        return False
    
    def __hash__(self):
        """
        Override hash function, in order to make dict of objects can be accessible by their name as well.
        """
        return hash(self.name)