printf: supplying variables without formatting - printf

Is it legal to use variables in printf without supplying the formatting (such as %d, %f).
for example:
printf("value is ok\r\n",myvalue);
The command compiles without errors nor warning, though I am not absolutely sure if it is legal or dangerous.

This reference says
There should be at least as many of these arguments as the number of values specified in the format specifiers. Additional arguments are ignored by the function.
Base on this information, your statement is perfectly legal, however I don't thinks that this is a good idea, since you code could quickly become confusing, which might lead to bugs.
Edit: The original source does not explicitly mention the case of zero arguments. To add another source, the linux man pages states
The format string is composed of zero or more directives.
This source does not discuss what happens with additional arguments. However, combining these two sources gives a definitive answer.

Related

: after variables in pascal

I know that by using 0:3 in this code in Pascal will put 3 decimal places to the result
var a,b:real;
begin
a:=23;
b:=7;
writeln(a/b:0:3);
readln;
end.
What I would like to know is if anyone has a source to learn what this : will do with other variables or if adding for example 0:3:4 will make a difference. Basically what : can do to a variable
For the exact definition of write parameters take a look at ISO standards 7185 and 10206, “Standard Pascal” and “Extended Pascal” respectively. These references are useless though if your compiler’s documentation does not make a statement regarding compliance with them. Other compilers have their own non-standard extensions, so the only reliable source of reference is your compiler’s documentation or even its source code if available.
[…] what this : will do with other variables […] Basically what : can do to a variable
As MartynA already noted this language is imprecise: The variables’ values are only read by write/writeLn/writeStr, thus leaving them unmodified.
[…] if adding for example 0:3:4 will make a difference.
To my knowledge a third write parameter is/was only allowed in PXSC, Pascal eXtensions for Scientific Computing. In this case the third parameter would indicate for the rounding mode (nonexistent or 0: closest printable number; greater than zero: round up; less than zero: round down).

Does the triple equal sign (===) behave differently in AssemblyScript?

A vendor I use packages their software with AssemblyScript. They provide some infrastructure and I build on top of it.
Accidentally, I changed my double equal signs ("==") to triple equal signs ("===") in a function that performs equality checks on hexadecimal strings. I spent hours ensuring that the values checked are indeed equal and have the same case sensitivity, but nothing could make the if statement enter the branch I was expecting it to enter, except for going back to "==".
And so I ended up here, asking for help. How is "===" different to "==" in AssemblyScript? Is it some quirk of the language itself or the vendor's parser?
Yes. In AssemblyScript tripple equal ("===") compare raw references and skip overloading operator ("=="). See docs.
There are have proposal avoid this non-standard for TypeScript behaviour. You could check and upvote this issue

Where is contains( Junction) defined?

This code works:
(3,6...66).contains( 9|21 ).say # OUTPUT: «any(True, True)␤»
And returns a Junction. It's also tested, but not documented.
The problem is I can't find its implementation anywhere. The Str code, which is also called from Cool, never returns a Junction (it does not take a Junction, either). There are no other methods contain in source.
Since it's autothreaded, it's probably specially defined somewhere. I have no idea where, though. Any help?
TL;DR Junction autothreading is handled by a single central mechanism. I have a go at explaining it below.
(The body of your question starts with you falling into a trap, one I think you documented a year or two back. It seems pretty irrelevant to what you're really asking but I cover that too.)
How junctions get handled
Where is contains( Junction) defined? ... The problem is I can't find [the Junctional] implementation anywhere. ... Since it's autothreaded, it's probably specially defined somewhere.
Yes. There's a generic mechanism that automatically applies autothreading to all P6 routines (methods, operators etc.) that don't have signatures that explicitly control what happens with Junction arguments.
Only a tiny handful of built in routines have these explicit Junction handling signatures -- print is perhaps the most notable. The same is true of user defined routines.
.contains does not have any special handling. So it is handled automatically by the generic mechanism.
Perhaps the section The magic of Junctions of my answer to an earlier SO Filtering elements matching two regexes will be helpful as a high level description of the low level details that follow below. Just substitute your 9|21 for the foo & bar in that SO, and your .contains for the grep, and it hopefully makes sense.
Spelunking the code
I'll focus on methods. Other routines are handled in a similar fashion.
method AUTOTHREAD does the work for full P6 methods.
This is setup in this code that sets up handling for both nqp and full P6 code.
The above linked P6 setup code in turn calls setup_junction_fallback.
When a method call occurs in a user's program, it involves calling find_method (modulo cache hits as explained in the comment above that code; note that the use of the word "fallback" in that comment is about a cache miss -- which is technically unrelated to the other fallback mechanisms evident in this code we're spelunking thru).
The bit of code near the end of this find_method handles (non-cache-miss) fallbacks.
Which arrives at find_method_fallback which starts off with the actual junction handling stuff.
A trap
This code works:
(3,6...66).contains( 9|21 ).say # OUTPUT: «any(True, True)␤»
It "works" to the degree this does too:
(3,6...66).contains( 2 | '9 1' ).say # OUTPUT: «any(True, True)␤»
See Lists become strings, so beware .contains() and/or discussion of the underlying issues such as pmichaud's comment.
Routines like print, put, infix ~, and .contains are string routines. That means they coerce their arguments to Str. By default the .Str coercion of a listy value is its elements separated by spaces:
put 3,6...18; # 3 6 9 12 15 18
put (3,6...18).contains: '9 1'; # True
It's also tested
Presumably you mean the two tests with a *.contains argument passed to classify:
my $m := #l.classify: *.contains: any 'a'..'f';
my $s := classify *.contains( any 'a'..'f'), #l;
Routines like classify are list routines. While some list routines do a single operation on their list argument/invocant, eg push, most of them, including classify, iterate over their list doing something with/to each element within the list.
Given a sequence invocant/argument, classify will iterate it and pass each element to the test, in this case a *.contains.
The latter will then coerce individual elements to Str. This is a fundamental difference compared to your example which coerces a sequence to Str in one go.

Dollar and exclamation mark (bang) symbols in VTL

I've recently encountered these two variables in some Velocity code:
$!variable1
!$variable2
I was surprised by the similarity of these so I became suspicious about the correctness of the code and become interested in finding the difference between two.
Is it possible that velocity allows any order of these two symbols or do they have different purpose? Do you know the answer?
#Jr. Here is the guide I followed when doing VM R&D: http://velocity.apache.org/engine/1.7/user-guide.html
Velocity uses the !$ and $! annotations for different things. If you use !$ it will basically be the same as a normal "!" operator, but the $! is used as a basic check to see if the variable is blank and if so it prints it out as an empty string. If your variable is empty or null and you don't use the $! annotation it will print the actual variable name as a string.
I googled and stackoverflowed a lot before I finally found the answer at people.apache.org.
According to that:
It is very easy to confuse the quiet reference notation with the
boolean not-Operator. Using the not-Operator, you use !${foo}, while
the quiet reference notation is $!{foo}. And yes, you will end up
sometimes with !$!{foo}...
Easy after all, shame it didn't struck me immediately. Hope this helps someone.

Trailing Ampersand in VB.NET hexadecimal?

This should be an easy one for folks. Google's got nothing except content farms linking to one blurb, and that's written in broken English. So let's get this cleared up here where it'll be entombed for all time.
What's the trailing ampersand on VB hexadecimal numbers for? I've read it forces conversion to an Int32 on the chance VB wants to try and store as an Int16. That makes sense to me. But the part I didn't get from the blurb was to always use the trailing ampersand for bitmasks, flags, enums, etc. Apparantly, it has something to do with overriding VB's fetish for using signed numbers for things internally, which can lead to weird results in comparisons.
So to get easy points, what are the rules for VB.Net hexadecimal numbers, with and without the trailing ampersand? Please include the specific usage in the case of bitmasks/flags and such, and how one would also use it to force signed vs. unsigned.
No C# please :)
Vb.net will regard "&h"-notation hex constants in the range from 0x80000000-0xFFFFFFFF as negative numbers unless the type is explicitly specified as UInt32, Int64, or UInt64. Such behavior might be understandable if the numbers were written with precisely eight digits following the "&", but for some reason I cannot fathom, vb.net will behave that way even if the numbers are written with leading zeroes. In present versions of VB, one may force the number to be evaluated correctly by using a suffix of "&" suffix (Int64), "L" (Int64), "UL" (UInt64), or "UI" (UInt32). In earlier versions of VB, the "problem range" was 0x8000-0xFFFF, and the only way to force numbers in that range to be evaluated correctly (as a 32-bit integer, which was then called a "Long") was a trailing ampersand.
Visual Basic has the concept of Type Characters. These can be used to modify variable declarations and literals, although I'd not recommend using them in variable declarations - most developers are more familiar these days with As. E.g. the following declarations are equivalent:
Dim X&
Dim X As Long
But personally, I find the second more readable. If I saw the first, I'd actually have to go visit the link above, or use Intellisense, to work out what the variable is (not good if looking at the code on paper).