I was looking at REPL-like evaluation of code from here and here, and tried to make a very small version for it, yet it fails:
use nqp;
class E {
has Mu $.compiler;
has $!save_ctx;
method evaluate(#fragments) {
for #fragments -> $code {
my $*MAIN_CTX;
my $*CTXSAVE := self;
$!compiler.eval($code,
outer_ctx => nqp::ctxcaller(nqp::ctx()));
if nqp::defined($*MAIN_CTX) {
$!save_ctx := $*MAIN_CTX;
}
}
}
method ctxsave(--> Nil) {
say "*in ctxsave*";
$*MAIN_CTX := nqp::ctxcaller(nqp::ctx());
$*CTXSAVE := 0;
}
}
my $e := E.new(compiler => nqp::getcomp("Raku"));
nqp::bindattr($e, E, '$!save_ctx', nqp::ctx());
$e.evaluate: ('say my #vals = 12, 3, 4;', 'say #vals.head');
I pieced together this from the above links without very much knowing what I'm doing :) When run, this happens:
*in ctxsave*
[12 3 4]
===SORRY!=== Error while compiling file.raku
Variable '#vals' is not declared. Did you mean '&val'?
file.raku:1
------> say ⏏#vals.head
with Rakudo v2022.04. First fragment was supposed to declare it (and prints it). Is it possible to do something like this, so it recognizes #vals as declared?
You can do it in pure Raku code, although depending on the not-exactly-official context parameter to EVAL.
# Let us use EVAL with user input
use MONKEY;
loop {
# The context starts out with a fresh environment
state $*REPL-CONTEXT = UNIT::;
# Get the next line of code to run.
my $next-code = prompt '> ';
# Evaluate it; note that exceptions with line numbers will be
# off by one, so may need fixups.
EVAL "\q'$*REPL-CONTEXT = ::;'\n$next-code", context => $*REPL-CONTEXT;
}
Trying it out:
$ raku simple-repl.raku
> my $x = 35;
> say $x;
35
> my $y = 7;
> say $x + $y;
42
Related
In Ruby I can group together some lines of code like so with a begin block:
x = begin
puts "Hi!"
a = 2
b = 3
a + b
end
puts x # 5
it's immediately evaluated and its value is the last value of the block (a + b here) (Javascripters do a similar thing with IIFEs)
What are the ways to do this in Raku? Is there anything smoother than:
my $x = ({
say "Hi!";
my $a = 2;
my $b = 3;
$a + $b;
})();
say $x; # 5
Insert a do in front of the block. This tells Raku to:
Immediately do whatever follows the do on its right hand side;
Return the value to the do's left hand side:
my $x = do {
put "Hi!";
my $a = 2;
my $b = 3;
$a + $b;
}
That said, one rarely needs to use do.
Instead, there are many other IIFE forms in Raku that just work naturally without fuss. I'll mention just two because they're used extensively in Raku code:
with whatever { .foo } else { .bar }
You might think I'm being silly, but those are two IIFEs. They form lexical scopes, have parameter lists, bind from arguments, the works. Loads of Raku constructs work like that.
In the above case where I haven't written an explicit parameter list, this isn't obvious. The fact that .foo is called on whatever if whatever is defined, and .bar is called on it if it isn't, is both implicit and due to the particular IIFE calling behavior of with.
See also if, while, given, and many, many more.
What's going on becomes more obvious if you introduce an explicit parameter list with ->:
for whatever -> $a, $b { say $a + $b }
That iterates whatever, binding two consecutive elements from it to $a and $b, until whatever is empty. If it has an odd number of elements, one might write:
for whatever -> $a, $b? { say $a + $b }
And so on.
Bottom line: a huge number of occurrences of {...} in Raku are IIFEs, even if they don't look like it. But if they're immediately after an =, Raku defaults to assuming you want to assign the lambda rather than immediately executing it, so you need to insert a do in that particular case.
Welcome to Raku!
my $x = BEGIN {
say "Hi!";
my $a = 2;
my $b = 3;
$a + $b;
}
I guess the common ancestry of Raku and Ruby shows :-)
Also note that to create a constant, you can also use constant:
my constant $x = do {
say "Hi!";
my $a = 2;
my $b = 3;
$a + $b;
}
If you can have a single statement, you can leave off the braces:
my $x = BEGIN 2 + 3;
or:
my constant $x = 2 + 3;
Regarding blocks: if they are in sink context (similar to "void" context in some languages), then they will execute just like that:
{
say "Executing block";
}
No need to explicitely call it: it will be called for you :-)
How to print an object in NQP ? (For debugging purposes)
It is easy in Raku:
say that is calling gist in its short loop code
dd The tiny Data Dumper as shown in this post
class Toto { has $.member = 42; }
class Titi { has $.member = 41; has $.toto = Toto.new }
my $ti = Titi.new;
say $ti;
# Titi.new(member => 41, toto => Toto.new(member => 42))
dd $ti;
# Titi $ti = Titi.new(member => 41, toto => Toto.new(member => 42))
It seems more complicated in NQP
class Toto { has $!member; sub create() {$!member := 42}};
class Titi { has $!member; has $!toto; sub create() {$!member := 41; $!toto := Toto.new; $!toto.create; }}
my $ti := Titi.new;
say($ti);
Cannot stringify this object of type P6opaque (Titi)
Of course, no .gist method, the code calls nqp::encode which finally expects a string.
Reducing the problem to an MRE:
class foo {}
say(foo.new); # Cannot stringify ...
Simplifying the solution:
class foo { method Str () { 'foo' } }
say(foo.new); # foo
In summary, add a Str method.
This sounds simple but there's a whole lot of behind-the-scenes stuff to consider/explain.
nqp vs raku
The above solution is the same technique raku uses; when a value is expected by a routine/operation to be a string, but isn't, the language behavior is to attempt to coerce to a string. Specifically, see if there's a Str method that can be called on the value, and if so, call it.
In this case NQP's NQPMu, which is way more barebones than raku's Mu, doesn't provide any default Str method. So a solution is to manually add one.
More generally, NQP is a pretty hostile language unless you know raku fairly well and have gone thru A course on Rakudo and NQP internals.
And once you're up to speed on the material in that course, I recommend you consider the IRC channels #raku-dev and/or #moarvm as your first port of call rather than SO (unless your goal is specifically to increase SO coverage of nqp/moarvm).
Debugging the compiler code
As you will have seen, the NQP code you linked calls .say on a filehandle.
That then calls this method.
That method's body is $str ~ "\n". That code will attempt to coerce $str to a string (just as it would in raku). That's what'll be generating the "Cannot stringify" error.
A search for "Cannot stringify" in the NQP repo only matched some Java code. And I bet you're not running Rakudo on the JVM. That means the error message must be coming from MoarVM.
The same search in the MoarVM repo yields this line in coerce.c in MoarVM.
Looking backwards in the routine containing that line we see this bit:
/* Check if there is a Str method. */
MVMROOT(tc, obj, {
strmeth = MVM_6model_find_method_cache_only(tc, obj,
tc->instance->str_consts.Str);
});
This shows the backend, written in C, looking for and invoking a "method" called Str. (It's relying on an internal API (6model) that all three layers of the compiler (raku, nqp, and backends) adhere to.)
Customizing the Str method
You'll need to customize the Str method as appropriate. For example, to print the class's name if it's a type object, and the value of its $!bar attribute otherwise:
class foo {
has $!bar;
method Str () { self ?? nqp::coerce_is($!bar) !! self.HOW.name(self) }
}
say(foo.new(bar=>42)); # 42
Despite the method name, the nqp say routine is not expecting a raku Str but rather an nqp native string (which ends up being a MoarVM native string on the MoarVM backend). Hence the need for nqp::coerce_is (which I found by browsing the nqp ops doc).
self.HOW.name(self) is another example of the way nqp just doesn't have the niceties that raku has. You could write the same code in raku but the idiomatic way to write it in raku is self.^name.
Currently, what I have is a list and hash discriminator. It does not work on object.
sub print_something ($value, :$indent = 0, :$no-indent=0) {
if nqp::ishash($value) {
print_hash($value, :$indent);
} elsif nqp::islist($value) {
print_array($value, :$indent);
} else {
if $no-indent {
say($value);
} else {
say_indent($indent, $value);
}
}
}
Where
sub print_indent ($int, $string) {
my $res := '';
my $i := 0;
while $i < $int {
$res := $res ~ ' ';
$i := $i + 1;
}
$res := $res ~ $string;
print($res);
}
sub print_array (#array, :$indent = 0) {
my $iter := nqp::iterator(#array);
say_indent($indent, '[');
while $iter {
print_value(nqp::shift($iter), :indent($indent+1));
}
say_indent($indent, ']');
}
sub print_hash (%hash, :$indent = 0) {
my $iter := nqp::iterator(%hash);
say_indent($indent, '{');
while $iter {
my $pair := nqp::shift($iter);
my $key := nqp::iterkey_s($pair);
my $value := nqp::iterval($pair);
print_indent($indent + 1, $key ~ ' => ');
print_value($value, :indent($indent+1), :no-indent(1));
}
say_indent($indent, '}');
}
I keep wanting to do something like this:
my $block := {
state $n = 0;
say $n++;
last if $n > 3;
};
loop $block;
Or even:
$block.loop;
I'm not expecting that this is possible but it would sure be cool if it was.
How would I find out where a particular routine comes from?
$ perl6
To exit type 'exit' or '^D'
> &loop.^name
===SORRY!=== Error while compiling:
Undeclared routine:
loop used at line 1
Making $block.loop work, is rather easy and could live in module land:
use MONKEY;
augment class Block {
method loop($self:) {
Nil while $self()
}
}
my $a = { print "a" };
$a.loop # aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa (with apologies to Knorkator)
Making loop $block work would be rather more involved, as this would involve changes to the action handling of the Perl 6 grammar.
Using what is already in Perl 6, you can use Seq.from-loop in sink context.
(Note that the REPL doesn't put the last statement on a line into sink context)
my $block := {
state $n = 0;
say $n++;
last if $n > 3;
}
Seq.from-loop: $block;
Seq.from-loop: {say $++}, {$++ <= 3};
Infinite lazy lists are awesome!
> my #fibo = 0, 1, *+* ... *;
> say #fibo[1000];
43466557686937456435688527675040625802564660517371780402481729089536555417949051890403879840079255169295922593080322634775209689623239873322471161642996440906533187938298969649928516003704476137795166849228875
They automatically cache their values, which is handy ... most of the time.
But when working with huge Fibonacci numbers (example), this can cause memory issues.
Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to create a non-caching Fibonacci sequence. Anyone?
One major problem is you are storing it in an array, which of course keeps all of its values.
The next problem is a little more subtle, the dotty sequence generator syntax LIST, CODE ... END doesn't know how many of the previous values the CODE part is going to ask for, so it keeps all of them.
( It could look at the arity/count of the CODE, but it doesn't currently seem to from experiments at the REPL )
Then there is the problem that using &postcircumfix:<[ ]> on a Seq calls .cache on the assumption that you are going to ask for another value at some point.
( From looking at the source for Seq.AT-POS )
It's possible that a future implementation could be better at each of these drawbacks.
You could create the sequence using a different feature to get around the current limitations of the dotty sequence generator syntax.
sub fibonacci-seq (){
gather {
take my $a = 0;
take my $b = 1;
loop {
take my $c = $a + $b;
$a = $b;
$b = $c;
}
}.lazy
}
If you are just iterating through the values you can just use it as is.
my $v;
for fibonacci-seq() {
if $_ > 1000 {
$v = $_;
last;
}
}
say $v;
my $count = 100000;
for fibonacci-seq() {
if $count-- <= 0 {
$v = $_;
last;
}
}
say chars $v; # 20899
You could also use the Iterator directly. Though this isn't necessary in most circumstances.
sub fibonacci ( UInt $n ) {
# have to get a new iterator each time this is called
my \iterator = fibonacci-seq().iterator;
for ^$n {
return Nil if iterator.pull-one =:= IterationEnd;
}
my \result = iterator.pull-one;
result =:= IterationEnd ?? Nil !! result
}
If you have a recent enough version of Rakudo you can use skip-at-least-pull-one.
sub fibonacci ( UInt $n ) {
# have to get a new iterator each time this is called
my \result = fibonacci-seq().iterator.skip-at-least-pull-one($n);
result =:= IterationEnd ?? Nil !! result
}
You can also implement the Iterator class directly, wrapping it in a Seq.
( this is largely how methods that return sequences are written in the Rakudo core )
sub fibonacci-seq2 () {
Seq.new:
class :: does Iterator {
has Int $!a = 0;
has Int $!b = 1;
method pull-one {
my $current = $!a;
my $c = $!a + $!b;
$!a = $!b;
$!b = $c;
$current;
}
# indicate that this should never be eagerly iterated
# which is recommended on infinite generators
method is-lazy ( --> True ) {}
}.new
}
Apparently, a noob cannot comment.
When defining a lazy iterator such as sub fibonacci-seq2, one should mark the iterator as lazy by adding a "is-lazy" method that returns True, e.g.:
method is-lazy(--> True) { }
This will allow the system to detect possible infiniloops better.
Why do I get this error-message?
#!perl6
use v6;
my #a = 1..3;
my #b = 7..10;
my #c = 'a'..'d';
for zip(#a;#b;#c) -> $nth_a, $nth_b, $nth_c { ... };
# Output:
# ===SORRY!===
# Unable to parse postcircumfix:sym<( )>, couldn't find final ')' at line 9
Rakudo doesn't implement the lol ("list of lists") form yet, and so cannot parse #a;#b;#c. For the same reason, zip doesn't have a form which takes three lists yet. Clearly the error message is less than awesome.
There isn't really a good workaround yet, but here's something that will get the job done:
sub zip3(#a, #b, #c) {
my $a-list = flat(#a.list);
my $b-list = flat(#b.list);
my $c-list = flat(#c.list);
my ($a, $b, $c);
gather while ?$a-list && ?$b-list && ?$c-list {
$a = $a-list.shift unless $a-list[0] ~~ ::Whatever;
$b = $b-list.shift unless $b-list[0] ~~ ::Whatever;
$c = $c-list.shift unless $c-list[0] ~~ ::Whatever;
take ($a, $b, $c);
}
}
for zip3(#a,#b,#c) -> $nth_a, $nth_b, $nth_c {
say $nth_a ~ $nth_b ~ $nth_c;
}
The multi-dimensional syntax (the use of ; inside parens) and zip across more than two lists both work, so the code originally posted now works (if you provide some real code rather than the { ... } stub block).