Distinct Inputs Checker

• 12/11/2017
• 2 minutes to read
• Contributors
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The Distinct Inputs Checker is a part of the quantum computer Trace Simulator. It is designed for detecting potential bugs in the code. Consider the following piece of Q# code to illustrate the issues detected by this package:

operation DoBoth( q1 : Qubit, q2 : Qubit, op1 : (Qubit=>()), op2 : (Qubit=>()) ) : () {
    body {
        op1(q1);
        op2(q2);
    }
}

When the user looks at this program, they assume that the order in which op1 and op2 are called does not matter because q1 and q2 are different qubits and operations acting on different qubits commute. Let us now consider an example, where this operation is used:

operation DisctinctQubitCaptured2Test () : () {
    body {
        using( q = Qubit[3] ) {
            let op1 = CNOT(_,q[1]);
            let op2 = CNOT(q[1],_);
            DoBoth( q[0],q[2],op1,op2);
        }
    }
}

Now op1 and op2 are both obtained using partial application and share a qubit. When the user calls DoBoth in the example above the result of the operation will depend on the order of op1 and op2 inside DoBoth. This is definitely not what the user would expect to happen. The Distinct Inputs Checker will detect such situations when enabled and will throw DistinctInputsCheckerException. See the API documentation on DistinctInputsCheckerException for more details.

Using the Distinct Inputs Checker in your C# Program

The following is an example of C# driver code for using the quantum computer trace simulator with the Distinct Inputs Checker enabled:

using Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.Core;
using Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.Simulators;
using Microsoft.Quantum.Simulation.Simulators.QCTraceSimulators;

namespace Quantum.MyProgram
{
    class Driver
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            var traceSimCfg = new QCTraceSimulatorConfiguration();
            traceSimCfg.useDistinctInputsChecker = true; //enables distinct inputs checker
            QCTraceSimulator sim = new QCTraceSimulator(traceSimCfg);
            var res = MyQuantumProgram.Run().Result;
            System.Console.WriteLine("Press any key to continue...");
            System.Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

The class QCTraceSimulatorConfiguration stores the configuration of the quantum computer trace simulator and can be provided as an argument for the QCTraceSimulator constructor. When useDistinctInputsChecker is set to true the Distinct Inputs C hecker is enabled. See the API documentation on QCTraceSimulator and QCTraceSimulatorConfiguration for more details.

See also

• The quantum computer Trace Simulator overview.