Single line exception to GCC_WARN_SHADOW = YES? - objective-c

I have this code:
id error;
// a bunch of stuff, including using error
Finalization finalization = ^(int status) {
id error; // <--- Declaration shadows a local variable
// a bunch of stuff, using error
}
// a bunch of stuff, using error
I use GCC_WARN_SHADOW because it's what I want in every case in my code except this one. In this case, it gives me a warning that I want to suppress.
Is there a way to suppress this one shadow warning without turning off GCC_WARN_SHADOW or renaming the inner error to something else? Some way to mark that declaration of error?
I'm using clang with Xcode 4, if it matters.

First, as a matter of opinion, it's really bad karma to shadow a local variable within an inner block (its bad enough shadowing a global variable in a function). Now "error" can take two different values within a function, and until whomever is reading your code figures it out, they will bang their head quite incessantly. I have seen this issue in real life among paid professionals developing apps. I really suggest renaming the inner error variable.
Answering your question, you can use the GCC/clang compiler pragma to suppress a warning.

Related

Compilation error only when using the repl

I am getting an error only when the code is entered line by line in the repl. It works when the whole program is pasted at once, or from the command line.
class A {
method a () {
return 1;
}
}
class B {
method b () {
return 2;
}
}
This is the error statement:
===SORRY!=== Error while compiling:
Package 'B' already has a method 'b' (did you mean to declare a multi method?)
This screen shot might make it clearer. On the left I just pasted the code, and on the right I entered it line by line. The code is still working but what is causing the error?
For some reason, I could not reproduce this using just one class.
I can reproduce that error, and looks like a REPL bug, or simply something the REPL is not prepared to do. This, for instance, will also raise an exception:
class A {
method a() {
return 1;
}
};
class foo {
has $.bar = 3;
};
In either form, either pasting it directly or in pieces. It's always the second class. It's probably related to the way EVAL works, but I really don't know. At the end of the day, the REPL can only take you so far and I'm not totally sure this is within the use case. You might want to use Comma or any other IDE, like emacs, for anything that's more complicated than a line; Comma also provides help for evaluating expressions, and even grammars.
I think Comma is the bees knees. And I almost never use the repl. But I enjoy:
Golfing Your example is a more than adequate MRE. But I love minimizing bug examples.
Speculating I think I can see what's going on.
Searching issue queues Rakudo has two issue queues on GH: old and new.
Spelunking compiler code Rakudo is mostly written in Raku; maybe we can work out what this problem is in the REPL code (which is part of the compiler)?
Golfing
First, the bug:
Welcome to ๐‘๐š๐ค๐ฎ๐๐จโ„ข v2021.03.
Implementing the ๐‘๐š๐ค๐ฎโ„ข programming language v6.d.
Built on MoarVM version 2021.03.
To exit type 'exit' or '^D'
> # 42
Nil
> { subset a
*
===SORRY!=== Error while compiling:
Redeclaration of symbol 'a'.
at line 3
------> <BOL>โ<EOL>
Commentary:
To get on the fairway, enter any line that's not just whitespace, and press Enter.
Pick the right iron; open a block with {, declare some named type, and press Enter. The REPL indicates you're on the green by displaying the * multi-line prompt.
To sink the ball, just hit Enter.
Second, golfing in aid of speculation:
> # 42
Nil
> { BEGIN say 99
99
* }
99
>
(BEGIN marks code that is to be run during compilation as soon as the compiler encounters it.)
Speculating
Why does the initial # 42 evaluation matter? Presumably the REPL tries to maintain declarations / state (of variables and types etc) during a REPL session.
And as part of that it's presumably remembering all previous code in a session.
And presumably it's seeing anything but blank lines as counting as previous code.
And the mere existence of some/any previous code somehow influences what state the REPL is maintaining and/or what it's asking the compiler to do.
Maybe.
Why does a type declaration matter when, say, a variable declaration doesn't?
Presumably the REPL and/or compiler is distinguishing between these two kinds of declaration.
Ignoring the REPL, when compiling code, a repeated my declaration only raises a warning, whereas a repeated type declaration is an error. Quite plausibly that's why?
Why does a type declaration have this effect?
Presumably the type successfully compiles and only after that an exception is thrown (because the code is incomplete due to the missing closing brace).
Then the REPL asks the compiler to again try to compile the multi-line code thus far entered, with whatever additional code the user has typed (in my golf version I type nothing and just hit Enter, adding no more code).
This repeated compile attempt includes the type declaration again, which type declaration, because the compilation state from the prior attempt to compile the multi-line code is somehow being retained, is seen by the compiler as a repeat declaration, causing it to throw an exception that causes the REPL to exit multi-line mode and report the error.
In other words, the REPL loop is presumably something like:
As each line is entered, pass it to the compiler, which compiles the code and throws an exception if anything goes wrong.
If an exception is thrown:
2.1 If in multi-line mode (with * prompt), then exit multi-line mode (go back to > prompt) and display exception message.
2.2 Else (so not in multi-line mode), if analysis (plausibly very basic) of the exception and/or entered code suggests multi-line mode would be useful, then enter that mode (with * prompt). In multi-line mode, the entire multi-line of code so far is recompiled each time the user presses Enter.
2.3 Else, display exception message.
(Obviously there's something else going on related to initialization given the need to start with some evaluation to manifest this bug, but that may well be a completely distinct issue.)
Searching
I've browsed through all open Rakudo issues in its old and new queues on GH that match 'repl'. I've selected four that illustrate the range of difficulties the REPL has with maintaining the state of a session:
REPL loses custom operators. "Interestingly, if a postfix operator like this is exported by a module which is loaded by the REPL, the REPL can successfully parse that operator just once, after which it will fail with an error similar to the above." Is this related to the way the bug this SO is focused on doesn't manifest until it's a second or later evaluation?
Perl6 REPL forgets the definition of infix sub. Looks like a dupe of the above issue, but includes extra debugging goodies from Brian Duggan. โค๏ธ
REPL messes up namespaces when Foo is used after Foo::Bar.
In REPL cannot bind to scalars declared on earlier lines.
One thing I haven't done is checked whether these bugs all still exist. My guess is they do. And there are many others like them. Perhaps they have a somewhat common cause? I've no idea. Perhaps we need to look at the code...
Spelunking
A search of the Rakudo sources for 'repl' quickly led to a REPL module. Less than 500 lines of high level Raku code! \o/ (For now, let's just pretend we can pretty much ignore digging into the code it calls...)
From my initial browser, I'll draw attention to:
A sub repl:
sub repl(*%_) {
my $repl := REPL.new(nqp::getcomp("Raku"), %_, True);
nqp::bindattr($repl,REPL,'$!save_ctx',nqp::ctxcaller(nqp::ctx));
$repl.repl-loop(:no-exit);
}
Blame shows that Liz added this a couple months ago. It's very tangential to this bug, but I'm guessing methods and variables with ctx in their name are pretty central to things so this is hopefully a nice way to start pondering that.
method repl-eval. 30 lines or so.
REPL: loop { ... }. 60 lines or so.
That'll do for tonight. I'll post this then return to it all another day.

PHP function written in 5.5 throws error when upgraded to 7.0

here is the function that worked prior to upgrading to 7.0
function set_session_vars() {
$nb_args=func_num_args();
$arg_list=func_get_args();
for($i=0;$i<$nb_args;$i++) {
global $$arg_list[$i];
$_SESSION[$arg_list[$i]] = $$arg_list[$i];
}
}
now it causer error that says:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '[', expecting ',' or ';' in /home/mvyc1956/public_html/members/includes/functions.php on line 322
I believe its related to non backward compatable changes to GLOBAL and the use of $$ and arrays, but my PHP is not good enough to figure it out.
Is there someone who is familiar with why this line :
global $$arg_list[$i];
which is line 322 that is being reported as the cause of the error, would be failing now, and what would you recommend I change the code to in order to have it work with PHP 7?
I did some googling and found this page but again, im not understanding what needs to be changed.
thanks
says syntax error so some of the code in the function is no longer valid, but it would take a php 7 expert to see it.
UPDATE
I removed the word GLOBAL from the above code and the app "seems" to be now working fine so I will now ask:
Does anyone know specifically, why Global was the non compatibility issue? and is my fix of simply removing it a solid one or will is there a better practice or will this removal come back to haunt me?
Backward incompatible changes:
global only accepts simple variables
Variable variables can no longer be used with the global keyword. The curly brace syntax can be used to emulate the previous behaviour if required:
// Valid in PHP 5 only.
global $$foo->bar;
// Valid in PHP 5 and 7.
global ${$foo->bar};
So in your case it should become:
global ${$arg_list[$i]};
The global keyword tells PHP to access a global variable (per launch of the script) instead of a local variable (per function). For example,
global $foo;
means that future uses of the variable $foo in that function refer to the global variable with that name, rather than a variable within the function itself.
What this is trying to do is look up a variable by arbitrary name in the global namespace. That's entirely the wrong way to do things. Instead, you should have a global array and use keys in the array. In fact, $$ is arguably a bad idea in general.
But that's neither here nor there. The problem is that the parsing rules changed in PHP 7.0 in a non-backwards-compatible way (because they're using a more traditional parser now, and thus had to make their associativity rules self-consistent).
More details here:
http://php.net/manual/en/migration70.incompatible.php#migration70.incompatible.variable-handling.indirect
To make a long story short, you need to rewrite that as:
global ${$arg_list[$i]};
and then your code will work correctly on both PHP 7 and PHP 5.
Incidentally, the function only appears to work without the global keyword. In fact, it is always getting empty values for those variables.

What is indirect object notation, why is it bad, and how does one avoid it?

The title pretty much sums it up, but here's the long version anyway.
After posting a small snippet of perl code, I was told to avoid indirect object notation, "as it has several side effects". The comment referenced this particular line:
my $some_object = new Some::Module(FIELD => 'value');
As this is how I've always done it, in an effort to get with the times I therefore ask:
What's so bad about it? (specifically)
What are the potential (presumably negative) side effects?
How should that line be rewritten?
I was about to ask the commenter, but to me this is worthy of its own post.
The main problem is that it's ambiguous. Does
my $some_object = new Some::Module(FIELD => 'value');
mean to call the new method in the Some::Module package, or does it mean to call the new function in the current package with the result of calling the Module function in the Some package with the given parameters?
i.e, it could be parsed as:
# method call
my $some_object = Some::Module->new(FIELD => 'value');
# or function call
my $some_object = new(Some::Module(FIELD => 'value'));
The alternative is to use the explicit method call notation Some::Module->new(...).
Normally, the parser guesses correctly, but the best practice is to avoid the ambiguity.
What's so bad about it?
The problems with Indirect Method Notation are avoidable, but it's far easier to tell people to avoid Indirect Method Notation.
The main problem it's very easy to call the wrong function by accident. Take the following code, for example:
package Widget;
sub new { ... }
sub foo { ... }
sub bar { ... }
sub method {
...;
my $o = new SubWidget;
...;
}
1;
In that code, new SubWidget is expected to mean
SubWidget->new()
Instead, it actually means
new("SubWidget")
That said, using strict will catch most of these instances of this error. Were use strict; to be added to the above snippet, the following error would be produced:
Bareword "SubWidget" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at Widget.pm line 11.
That said, there are cases where using strict would not catch the error. They primarily involve the use of parens around the arguments of the method call (e.g. new SubWidget($x)).
So that means
Using Indirect Object Notation without parens can result in odd error messages.
Using Indirect Object Notation with parens can result in the wrong code being called.
The former is bearable, and the latter is avoidable. But rather than telling people "avoid using parens around the arguments of method calls using Indirect Method Notation", we simply tell people "avoid using Indirect Method Notation". It's just too fragile.
There's another issue. It's not just using Indirect Object Notation that's a problem, it's supporting it in Perl. The existence of the feature causes multiple problems. Primarily,
It causes some syntax errors to result in very odd/misleading error messages because the code appeared to be using ION when it wasn't.
It prevents useful features from being implemented since they clash with valid ION syntax.
On the plus side, using no indirect; helps the first problem.
How should that line be rewritten?
The correct way to write the method call is the following:
my $some_object = Some::Module->new(FIELD => 'value');
That said, even this syntax is ambiguous. It will first check if a function named Some::Module exists. But that's so very unlikely that very few people protect themselves from such problems. If you wanted to protect yourself, you could use the following:
my $some_object = Some::Module::->new(FIELD => 'value');
As to how to avoid it: There's a CPAN module that forbids the notation, acting like a pragma module:
no indirect;
http://metacpan.org/pod/indirect
The commenter just wanted to see Some::Module->new(FIELD => 'value'); as the constructor.
Perl can use indirect object syntax for other bare words that look like they might be methods, but nowadays the perlobj documentation suggests not to use it.
The general problem with it is that code written this way is ambiguous and exercises Perl's parser to test the namespace to e.g. check when you write method Namespace whether Namespace::method exists.

Which one is better for me to use: "defer-panic-recover" or checking "if err != nil { //dosomething}" in golang?

I've made a large program that opens and closes files and databases, perform writes and reads on them etc among other things. Since there no such thing as "exception handling in go", and since I didn't really know about "defer" statement and "recover()" function, I applied error checking after every file-open, read-write, database entry etc. E.g.
_,insert_err := stmt.Run(query)
if insert_err != nil{
mylogs.Error(insert_err.Error())
return db_updation_status
}
For this, I define db_updation_status at the beginning as "false" and do not make it "true" until everything in the program goes right.
I've done this in every function, after every operation which I believe could go wrong.
Do you think there's a better way to do this using defer-panic-recover? I read about these here http://golang.org/doc/articles/defer_panic_recover.html, but can't clearly get how to use them. Do these constructs offer something similar to exception-handling? Am I better off without these constructs?
I would really appreciate if someone could explain this to me in a simple language, and/or provide a use case for these constructs and compare them to the type of error handling I've used above.
It's more handy to return error values - they can carry more information (advantage to the client/user) than a two valued bool.
What concerns panic/recover: There are scenarios where their use is completely sane. For example, in a hand written recursive descent parser, it's quite a PITA to "bubble" up an error condition through all the invocation levels. In this example, it's a welcome simplification if there's a deferred recover at the top most (API) level and one can report any kind of error at any invocation level using, for example
panic(fmt.Errorf("Cannot %v in %v", foo, bar))
If an operation can fail and returns an error, than checking this error immediately and handling it properly is idiomatic in go, simple and nice to check if anything gets handled properly.
Don't use defer/recover for such things: Needed cleanup actions are hard to code, especially if stuff gets nested.
The usual way to report an error to a caller is to return an error as an extra return value. The canonical Read method is a well-known instance; it returns a byte count and an error.
But what if the error is unrecoverable? Sometimes the program simply cannot continue.
For this purpose, there is a built-in function panic that in effect creates a run-time error that will stop the program (but see the next section). The function takes a single argument of arbitrary typeโ€”often a stringโ€”to be printed as the program dies. It's also a way to indicate that something impossible has happened, such as exiting an infinite loop.
http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#errors

Write a compiler for a language that looks ahead and multiple files?

In my language I can use a class variable in my method when the definition appears below the method. It can also call methods below my method and etc. There are no 'headers'. Take this C# example.
class A
{
public void callMethods() { print(); B b; b.notYetSeen();
public void print() { Console.Write("v = {0}", v); }
int v=9;
}
class B
{
public void notYetSeen() { Console.Write("notYetSeen()\n"); }
}
How should I compile that? what i was thinking is:
pass1: convert everything to an AST
pass2: go through all classes and build a list of define classes/variable/etc
pass3: go through code and check if there's any errors such as undefined variable, wrong use etc and create my output
But it seems like for this to work I have to do pass 1 and 2 for ALL files before doing pass3. Also it feels like a lot of work to do until I find a syntax error (other than the obvious that can be done at parse time such as forgetting to close a brace or writing 0xLETTERS instead of a hex value). My gut says there is some other way.
Note: I am using bison/flex to generate my compiler.
My understanding of languages that handle forward references is that they typically just use the first pass to build a list of valid names. Something along the lines of just putting an entry in a table (without filling out the definition) so you have something to point to later when you do your real pass to generate the definitions.
If you try to actually build full definitions as you go, you would end up having to rescan repatedly, each time saving any references to undefined things until the next pass. Even that would fail if there are circular references.
I would go through on pass one and collect all of your class/method/field names and types, ignoring the method bodies. Then in pass two check the method bodies only.
I don't know that there can be any other way than traversing all the files in the source.
I think that you can get it down to two passes - on the first pass, build the AST and whenever you find a variable name, add it to a list that contains that blocks' symbols (it would probably be useful to add that list to the corresponding scope in the tree). Step two is to linearly traverse the tree and make sure that each symbol used references a symbol in that scope or a scope above it.
My description is oversimplified but the basic answer is -- lookahead requires at least two passes.
The usual approach is to save B as "unknown". It's probably some kind of type (because of the place where you encountered it). So you can just reserve the memory (a pointer) for it even though you have no idea what it really is.
For the method call, you can't do much. In a dynamic language, you'd just save the name of the method somewhere and check whether it exists at runtime. In a static language, you can save it in under "unknown methods" somewhere in your compiler along with the unknown type B. Since method calls eventually translate to a memory address, you can again reserve the memory.
Then, when you encounter B and the method, you can clear up your unknowns. Since you know a bit about them, you can say whether they behave like they should or if the first usage is now a syntax error.
So you don't have to read all files twice but it surely makes things more simple.
Alternatively, you can generate these header files as you encounter the sources and save them somewhere where you can find them again. This way, you can speed up the compilation (since you won't have to consider unchanged files in the next compilation run).
Lastly, if you write a new language, you shouldn't use bison and flex anymore. There are much better tools by now. ANTLR, for example, can produce a parser that can recover after an error, so you can still parse the whole file. Or check this Wikipedia article for more options.