If I define a structure like this struct foo {char x; float y ; char z; double t}; the alignment can be platform dependent, but I'd expect offset 0,4,8,16 for the members x,y,z,t respectively on most architectures/compilers.
If I define corresponding structure in Squeak
ExternalStructure subclass: #Foo
instanceVariableNames: ''
classVariableNames: ''
poolDictionaries: ''
category: 'FFI-Tests'.
and define the fields naively with
Foo class>fields
^#(
(x 'char')
(y 'float')
(z 'char')
(t 'double') )
then generate the accessors with Foo defineFields, I get those packed offsets:
Foo>>x
^handle unsignedCharAt: 1
Foo>>y
^handle floatAt: 2
Foo>>z
^handle unsignedCharAt: 6
Foo>>t
^handle doubleAt: 7
That is field offsets of 0,1,5,6 respectively.
How am I supposed to obtain a platform compatible alignment?
insert padding fields?
force the previous field size?
forget about the auto-generated thing and code all the access methods by myself?
If I force the size as the 3rd element of some of the fields spec, then I can obtain desired offsets.
Foo class>>fields
^#(
(x 'char' 4)
(y 'float' )
(z 'char' 8)
(t 'double')
)
I would have preferred a way to specify alignment of current field rather than forcing the size of previous field, but well, maybe someone will find a better solution.
Note that it is a size in bytes. If I replace char with short, then I must keep the same byte-size spec in 3rd column if I want to obtain the same offsets 0,4,8,16.
Foo class>>fields
^#(
(x 'short' 4)
(y 'float' )
(z 'short' 8)
(t 'double')
)
Related
I'm learning OCaml, and the docs and books I'm reading aren't very clear on some things.
In simple words, what are the differences between
-10
and
~-10
To me they seem the same. I've encountered other resources trying to explain the differences, but they seem to explain in terms that I'm not yet familiar with, as the only thing I know so far are variables.
In fact, - is a binary operator, so some expression can be ambigous : f 10 -20 is treated as (f 10) - 20. For example, let's imagine this dummy function:
let f x y = (x, y)
If I want produce the tuple (10, -20) I naïvely would write something like that f 10 -20 which leads me to the following error:
# f 10 -20;;
Error: This expression has type 'a -> int * 'a
but an expression was expected of type int
because the expression is evaluated as (f 10) - 20 (so a substract over a function!!) so you can write the expression like this: f 10 (-20), which is valid or f 10 ~-20 since ~- (and ~+ and ~-. ~+. for floats) are unary operators, the predecense is properly respected.
It is easier to start by looking at how user-defined unary (~-) operators work.
type quaternion = { r:float; i:float; j:float; k:float }
let zero = { r = 0.; i = 0.; j = 0.; k = 0. }
let i = { zero with i = 1. }
let (~-) q = { r = -.q.r; i = -.q.i; j = -. q.j; k = -. q.k }
In this situation, the unary operator - (and +) is a shorthand for ~- (and ~+) when the parsing is unambiguous. For example, defining -i with
let mi = -i
works because this - could not be the binary operator -.
Nevertheless, the binary operator has a higher priority than the unary - thus
let wrong = Fun.id -i
is read as
let wrong = (Fun.id) - (i)
In this context, I can either use the full form ~-
let ok' = Fun.id ~-i
or add some parenthesis
let ok'' = Fun.id (-i)
Going back to type with literals (e.g integers, or floats), for those types, the unary + and - symbol can be part of the literal itself (e.g -10) and not an operator. For instance redefining ~- and ~+ does not change the meaning of the integer literals in
let (~+) = ()
let (~-) = ()
let really = -10
let positively_real = +10
This can be "used" to create some quite obfuscated expression:
let (~+) r = { zero with r }
let (+) x y = { r = x.r +. y.r; i = x.i +. y.i; k = x.k +. x.k; j =x.k +. y.j }
let ( *. ) s q = { r = s *. q.r; i = s *. q.i; j = s *. q.j; k = s *. q.k }
let this_is_valid x = +x + +10. *. i
OCaml has two kinds of operators - prefix and infix. The prefix operators precede expressions and infix occur in between the two expressions, e.g., in !foo we have the prefix operator ! coming before the expression foo and in 2 + 3 we have the infix operator + between expressions 2 and 3.
Operators are like normal functions except that they have a different syntax for application (aka calling), whilst functions are applied to an arbitrary number of arguments using a simple syntax of juxtaposition, e.g., f x1 x2 x3 x41, operators can have only one (prefix) or two (infix) arguments. Prefix operators are very close to normal functions, cf., f x and !x, but they have higher precedence (bind tighter) than normal function application. Contrary, the infix operators, since they are put between two expressions, enable a more natural syntax, e.g., x + y vs. (+) x y, but have lower precedence (bind less tight) than normal function application. Moreover, they enable chaining several operators in a row, e.g., x + y + z is interpreted as (x + y) + z, which is much more readable than add (add (x y) z).
Operators in OCaml distinguished purely syntactically. It means that the kind of an operator is fully defined by the first character of that operator, not by a special compiler directive, like in some other languages (i.e., there is not infix + directive in OCaml). If an operator starts with the prefix-symbol sequence, e.g., !, ?#, ~%, it is considered as prefix and if it starts with an infix-symbol then it is, correspondingly, an infix operator.
The - and -. operators are treated specially and can appear both as prefix and infix. E.g., in 1 - -2 we have - occurring both in the infix and prefix positions. However, it is only possible to disambiguate between the infix and the prefix versions of the - (and -.) operators when they occur together with other operators (infix or prefix), but when we have a general expression, the - operator is treated as infix. E.g., max 0 -1 is interpreted as (max 0) - 1 (remember that operator has lower precedence than function application, therefore when they two appear with no parentheses then functions are applied first and operators after that). Another example, Some -1, which is interpreted as Some - 1, not as Some (-1). To disambiguate such code, you can use either the parentheses, e.g., max 0 (-1), or the prefix-only versions, e.g, Some ~-1 or max 0 ~-1.
As a matter of personal style, I actually prefer parentheses as it is usually hard to keep these rules in mind when you read the code.
1) Purists will say that functions in OCaml can have only one argument and f x1 x2 x3 x4 is just ((f x1) x2) x3) x4, which would be a totally correct statement, but a little bit irrelevant to the current discussion.
In Type-Driven Development with Idris ch. 4, they say
The Prelude also defines functions and notation to allow Nat to be used like any other numeric type, so rather than writing S (S (S (S Z))), you can simply write 4.
and similarly for Fin. How does it achieve that? I've looked at the source but I can't figure it out.
from where you linked notice fromIntegerNat:
||| Convert an Integer to a Nat, mapping negative numbers to 0
fromIntegerNat : Integer -> Nat
fromIntegerNat 0 = Z
fromIntegerNat n =
if (n > 0) then
S (fromIntegerNat (assert_smaller n (n - 1)))
else
Z
and fromInteger in the Num implementation of Nat:
Num Nat where
(+) = plus
(*) = mult
fromInteger = fromIntegerNat
and Cast Integer Nat
||| Casts negative `Integers` to 0.
Cast Integer Nat where
cast = fromInteger
In the case of Idris1 it will attempt to cast from a literal (such as Char, String or Integer) into whatever type is required via those "fromFunctions" (as noted in a comment in one of the above sources: [...] '-5' desugars to 'negate (fromInteger 5)') and in general Idris1 supports implicit casting for any two types. ( http://docs.idris-lang.org/en/latest/tutorial/miscellany.html#implicit-conversions )
In the case of Idris2, there are some pragmas (%charLit fromChar, %stringLit fromString, %integerLit fromInteger) to hint the compiler to use some cast function from a literal into any other type.
Is there a way to tell Idris to interpret decimal strings such as 2, 10, etc as Nat? The default behavior in the repl is to interpret them as Integer. In Coq, for example, it's possible to specify an interpretation scope with % to disambiguate notations, so I guess I'm hoping that something like 10%Nat exists. Is there something like that in Idris?
The standard prelude contains
the : (a : Type) -> (value: a) -> a
the _ = id
which can be used to give explicit types:
the Integer 10
the Nat 6
the (Vect 3 Int) [1,2,3]
There's also with [namespace] [expr], which privileges namespace inside expr. This seems closer to %, but the seems more often used.
with Vect [['a', 'b']] -- Vect 1 (Vect 2 Char)
with List [['a', 'b']] -- List (List Char)
You can make a syntax extension for the:
syntax [expr] "%" [type] = the type expr
5%Nat
10%Int
But not for with.
From what I have read, eq_rect and equality seem deeply interlinked. Weirdly, I'm not able to find a definition on the manual for it.
Where does it come from, and what does it state?
If you use Locate eq_rect you will find that eq_rect is located in Coq.Init.Logic, but if you look in that file there is no eq_rect in it. So, what's going on?
When you define an inductive type, Coq in many cases automatically generates 3 induction principles for you, appending _rect, _rec, _ind to the name of the type.
To understand what eq_rect means you need its type,
Check eq_rect.
here we go:
eq_rect
: forall (A : Type) (x : A) (P : A -> Type),
P x -> forall y : A, x = y -> P y
and you need to understand the notion of Leibniz's equality:
Leibniz characterized the notion of equality as follows:
Given any x and y, x = y if and only if, given any predicate P, P(x) if and only if P(y).
In this law, "P(x) if and only if P(y)" can be weakened to "P(x) if P(y)"; the modified law is equivalent to the original, since a statement that applies to "any x and y" applies just as well to "any y and x".
Speaking less formally, the above quotation says that if x and y are equal, their "behavior" for every predicate is the same.
To see more clearly that Leibniz's equality directly corresponds to eq_rect we can rearrange the order of parameters of eq_rect into the following equivalent formulation:
eq_rect_reorder
: forall (A : Type) (P : A -> Type) (x y : A),
x = y -> P x -> P y
Say that I have the following list of equations:
list: [x=1, y=2, z=3];
I use this pattern often to have multiple return values from a function. Kind of of like how you would use an object, in for example, javascript. However, in javascript, I can do things like this. Say that myFunction() returns the object {x:1, y:2, z:3}, then I can destructure it with this syntax:
let {x,y,z} = myFunction();
And now x,y,z are assigned the values 1,2,3 in the current scope.
Is there anything like this in maxima? Now I use this:
x: subst(list, x);
y: subst(list, y);
z: subst(list, z);
How about this. Let l be a list of equations of the form somesymbol = somevalue. I think all you need is:
map (lhs, l) :: map (rhs, l);
Here map(lhs, l) yields the list of symbols, and map(rhs, l) yields the list of values. The operator :: means evaluate the left-hand side and assign the right-hand side to it. When the left-hand side is a list, then Maxima assigns each value on the right-hand side to the corresponding element on the left.
E.g.:
(%i1) l : [a = 12, b = 34, d = 56] $
(%i2) map (lhs, l) :: map (rhs, l);
(%o2) [12, 34, 56]
(%i3) values;
(%o3) [l, a, b, d]
(%i4) a;
(%o4) 12
(%i5) b;
(%o5) 34
(%i6) d;
(%o6) 56
You can probably achieve it and write a function that could be called as f(['x, 'y, 'z], list); but you will have to be able to make some assignments between symbols and values. This could be done by writing a tiny ad hoc Lisp function being:
(defun $assign (symb val) (set symb val))
You can see how it works (as a first test) by first typing (form within Maxima):
:lisp (defun $assign (symb val) (set symb val))
Then, use it as: assign('x, 42) which should assign the value 42 to the Maxima variable x.
If you want to go with that idea, you should write a tiny Lisp file in your ~/.maxima directory (this is a directory where you can put your most used functions); call it for instance myfuncs.lisp and put the function above (without the :lisp prefix); then edit (in the very same directory) your maxima-init.mac file, which is read at startup and add the two following things:
add a line containing load("myfuncs.lisp"); before the following part;
define your own Maxima function (in plain Maxima syntax with no need to care about Lisp). Your function should contain some kind of loop for performing all assignments; now you could use the assign(symbol, value) function for each variable.
Your function could be something like:
f(vars, l) := for i:1 thru length(l) do assign(vars[i], l[i]) $
which merely assign each value from the second argument to the corresponding symbol in the first argument.
Thus, f(['x, 'y], [1, 2]) will perform the expected assigments; of course you can start from that for doing more precisely what you need.