If I have a function that I want to be available outside of the current module, I can do the following...
(provide my-function)
Can I do this for a list of functions?
I tried the following...
(define f1 ...) ; body omitted for clarity
(define f2 ...) ; ditto
(define my-funs '(f1 f2))
(provide my-funs)
...but this gave "Unbound identifier in: f1" when I tried it.
Can I do this? Thanks
Update: Just to clarify what I'm trying to do here, I am working my way through Beautiful Racket, and am doing the first tutorial. At the stage where he defines the expander, he adds a handle function to handle the operators...
(define (handle [arg #f])
(cond
[(number? arg) (push-stack! arg)]
[(or (equal? * arg) (equal? + arg))
(define op-result (arg (pop-stack!) (pop-stack!)))
(push-stack! op-result)]))
But then, in order to make this work, he provides both + and *...
(provide + *)
This means that these two operators are hard-coded twice. When adding support for other operators, you'd need to modify the handle function and the provide call. I am trying to work out if we can define a list of operators, and use that in both, so you'd only need to make one modification to support new operators.
No, you can't do this.
You can export a list of functions by using filtered-out and begin-for-syntax (as seen below), but this prevents you from using the list within your code.
Exporting a list
#lang racket
(module fns racket
(require racket/provide)
(define (f1 a) (+ a 1))
(define (f2 a) (+ a 2))
(begin-for-syntax
(define my-funs '(f1 f2)))
(provide
(filtered-out
(λ (name) (and (member (string->symbol name) my-funs) name))
(all-defined-out))))
(require 'fns)
(display (f1 2))
How this works
provide can take any number of provide-spec forms and specifying multiple provide-specs is equivalent to writing multiple provide forms. One of the available provide-spec forms is all-defined-out, which will export all defined symbols in the module (or file if a module isn't explicitly specified).
By requiring racket/provide, we get access to helper functions that can transform and operate on provide-spec forms; filtered-out in particular allows us to run arbitrary code over a provide-spec and returns a valid provide-spec. (The required proc-expr is a function that takes a string (the string value of the exported identifiers) and returns a string or a falsy value. That's why when using member, we wrap it in an and and return the raw name itself. This could also be accomplished with findf: (λ (name) (findf (λ (n) (equal? (string->symbol name) n)) my-funs)))
However, this isn't quite enough, as provide is executed at "compile time", meaning that our list my-funs isn't available yet. To handle that, we need to wrap that definition in begin-for-syntax, which makes the binding available at "compile time" as well. But, by moving my-funs to "compile time", you lose the ability to use my-funs in non-"compile time" code. This means, for instance, you couldn't say (cond ... [(member arg my-funs) ...]):
(define (handle [arg #f])
(cond
[(number? arg) (push-stack! arg)]
[(member arg my-funs)
;; ^--- Error here with "my-funs: unbound identifier"
(define op-result (arg (pop-stack!) (pop-stack!)))
(push-stack! op-result)]))
Related
Short version:
I want to change the #+ and #- reader macros to apply to all immediately subsequent tokens starting with ##, in addition to the following token. Therefore, the following code...
#+somefeature
##someattribute1
##someattribute2
(defun ...)
...would, in the absence of somefeature, result in no code.
Long version:
I have written my own readtable-macros which apply transformations to subsequent code. For example:
##traced
(defun ...)
This yields a function that writes its arguments and return values to a file, for debugging.
This fails, however, when used in conjunction with the #+ reader macro:
#+somefeature
##traced
(defun ...)
In the absence of somefeature, the function continues to be defined, albeit without the ##traced modification. This is obviously not the desired outcome.
One possible solution would be to use progn, as follows:
#+somefeature
(progn
##traced
(defun ...))
But that's kind of ugly.
I would like to modify the #+ and #- reader macros, such that they may consume more than one token. Something like this:
(defun conditional-syntax-reader (stream subchar arg)
; If the conditional fails, consume subsequent tokens while they
; start with ##, then consume the next token.
)
(setf *readtable* (copy-readtable))
(set-dispatch-macro-character #\# #\+ #'conditional-syntax-reader)
(set-dispatch-macro-character #\# #\- #'conditional-syntax-reader)
The problem is, I don't know how to "delegate" to the original reader macros; and I don't understand enough about how they were implemented to re-implement them myself in their entirety.
A naive approach would be:
(defun consume-tokens-recursively (stream)
(let ((token (read stream t nil t)))
(when (string= "##" (subseq (symbol-string token) 0 2))
(consume-tokens-recursively stream)))) ; recurse
(defun conditional-syntax-reader (stream subchar arg)
(unless (member (read stream t nil t) *features*)
(consume-tokens-recursively stream)))
However, I'm given to believe that this wouldn't be sufficient:
The #+ syntax operates by first reading the feature specification and then skipping over the form if the feature is false. This skipping of a form is a bit tricky because of the possibility of user-defined macro characters and side effects caused by the #. and #, constructions. It is accomplished by binding the variable read-suppress to a non-nil value and then calling the read function.
This seems to imply that I can just let ((*read-suppress* t)) when using read to solve the issue. Is that right?
EDIT 1
Upon further analysis, it seems the problem is caused by not knowing how many tokens to consume. Consider the following attributes:
##export expects one argument: the (defun ...) to export.
##traced expects two arguments: the debug level and the (defun ...) to trace.
Example:
#+somefeature
##export
##traced 3
(defun ...)
It turns out that #+ and #- are capable of suppressing all these tokens; but there is a huge problem!
When under a suppressing #+ or #-, (read) returns NIL!
Example:
(defun annotation-syntax-reader (stream subchar arg)
(case (read stream t nil t)
('export
(let ((defun-form (read stream t nil t)))))
; do something
('traced
(let* ((debug-level (read stream t nil t))
(defun-form (read stream t nil t)))))))
; do something
(setf *readtable* (copy-readtable))
(set-dispatch-macro-character #\# #\# #'annotation-syntax-reader)
#+(or) ##traced 3 (defun ...)
The ##traced token is being suppressed by the #+. In this situation, all the (read) calls in (annotation-syntax-reader) consume real tokens but return NIL!
Therefore, the traced token is consumed, but the case fails. No additional tokens are thus consumed; and control leaves the scope of the #+.
The (defun ...) clause is executed as normal, and the function comes into being. Clearly not the desired outcome.
The standard readtable
Changing the macros for #+ and #- is a bit excessive solution I think, but in any case remember to not actually change the standard readtable (as you did, but its important to repeat in the answer)
The consequences are undefined if an attempt is made to modify the standard readtable. To achieve the effect of altering or extending standard syntax, a copy of the standard readtable can be created; see the function copy-readtable.
§2.1.1.2 The Standard Readtable
Now, maybe I'm missing something (please give us a hint about how your reader macro is defined if so), but I think it is possible to avoid that and write your custom macros in a way that works for your use case.
Reader macro
Let's define a simple macro as follows:
CL-USER> (defun my-reader (stream char)
(declare (ignore char))
(let ((name (read stream)
(form (read stream))
(unless *read-suppress*
`(with-decoration ,name ,form)))
MY-READER
[NB: This was edited to take into account *read-suppress*: the code always read two forms, but returns nil in case it is being ignored. In the comments you say that you may need to read an indefinite number of forms based on the name of the decoration, but with *read-suppress* the recursive calls to read return nil for symbols, so you don't know which decoration is being applied. In that case it might be better to wrap some arguments in a literal list, or parse the stream manually (read-char, etc.). Also, since you are using a dispatching macro, maybe you can add a numerical argument if you want the decoration to be applied to more than one form (#2#inline), but that could be a bad idea when later the decorated code is being modified.]
Here the reader does a minimal job, namely build a form that is intended to be macroexpanded later. I don't even need to define with-decoration for now, as I'm interested in the read step. The intent is to read the next token (presumably a symbol that indicates what decoration is being applied, and a form to decorate).
I'm binding this macro to a unused character:
CL-USER> (set-macro-character #\§ 'my-reader)
T
Here when I test the macro it wraps the following form:
CL-USER> (read-from-string "§test (defun)")
(WITH-DECORATION TEST (DEFUN))
13 (4 bits, #xD, #o15, #b1101)
And here it works with a preceding QUOTE too, the apostrophe reader grabs the next form, which recursively reads two forms:
CL-USER> '§test (defun)
(WITH-DECORATION TEST (DEFUN))
Likewise, a conditional reader macro will ignore all the next lines:
CL-USER> #+(or) t
; No values
CL-USER> #+(or) §test (defun)
; No values
CL-USER> #+(or) §one §two §three (defun)
; No values
Decoration macro
If you use this syntax, you'll have nested decorated forms:
CL-USER> '§one §two (defun test ())
(WITH-DECORATION ONE (WITH-DECORATION TWO (DEFUN TEST ())))
With respect to defun in toplevel positions, you can arrange for your macros to unwrap the nesting (not completely tested, there might be bugs):
(defun unwrap-decorations (form stack)
(etypecase form
(cons (destructuring-bind (head . tail) form
(case head
(with-decoration (destructuring-bind (token form) tail
(unwrap-decorations form (cons token stack))))
(t `(with-decorations ,(reverse stack) ,form)))))))
CL-USER> (unwrap-decorations ** nil)
(WITH-DECORATIONS (ONE TWO) (DEFUN TEST ()))
And in turn, with-decorations might know about DEFUN forms and how to annotate them as necessary.
For the moment, our original macro is only the following (it needs more error checking):
(defmacro with-decoration (&whole whole &rest args)
(unwrap-decorations whole nil))
For the sake of our example, let's define a generic annotation mechanism:
CL-USER> (defgeneric expand-decoration (type name rest))
#<STANDARD-GENERIC-FUNCTION COMMON-LISP-USER::EXPAND-DECORATION (0)>
It is used in with-decorations to dispatch on an appropriate expander for each decoration. Keep in mind that all the efforts here are to keep defun in a top-level positions (under a progn), a recursive annotation would let evaluation happens (in the case of defun, it would result in the name of the function being defined), and the annotation could be done on the result.
The main macro is then here, with a kind of fold (reduce) mechanism where the forms are decorated using the resulting expansion so far. This allows for expanders to place code before or after the main form (or do other fancy things):
(defmacro with-decorations ((&rest decorations) form)
(etypecase form
(cons (destructuring-bind (head . tail) form
(ecase head
(defun (destructuring-bind (name args . body) tail
`(progn
,#(loop
for b = `((defun ,name ,args ,#body)) then forms
for d in decorations
for forms = (expand-decoration d name b)
finally (return forms))))))))))
(nb. here above we only care about defun but the loop should probably be done outside of the dispatching thing, along with a way to indicate to expander methods that a function is being expanded; well, it could be better)
Say, for example, you want to declare a function as inline, then the declaration must happen before (so that the compiler can know the source code must be kept):
(defmethod expand-decoration ((_ (eql 'inline)) name rest)
`((declaim (inline ,name)) ,#rest))
Likewise, if you want to export the name of the function being defined, you can export it after the function is defined (order is not really important here):
(defmethod expand-decoration ((_ (eql 'export)) name rest)
`(,#rest (export ',name)))
The resulting code allows you to have a single (progn ...) form with a defun in toplevel position:
CL-USER> (macroexpand '§inline §export (defun my-test-fn () "hello"))
(PROGN
(DECLAIM (INLINE MY-TEST-FN))
(DEFUN MY-TEST-FN () "hello")
(EXPORT 'MY-TEST-FN))
I am trying to make a list of callback functions, which could look like this:
(("command1" . 'callback1)
("command2" . 'callback2)
etc)
I'd like it if I could could do something like:
(define-callback callback1 "command1" args
(whatever the function does))
Rather than
(defun callback1 (args)
(whatever the function does))
(add-to-list 'callback-info ("command1" . 'callback1))
Is there a convenient way of doing this, e.g., with macros?
This is a good example of a place where it's nice to use a two-layered approach, with an explicit function-based layer, and then a prettier macro layer on top of that.
Note the following assumes Common Lisp: it looks just possible from your question that you are asking about elisp, in which case something like this can be made to work but it's all much more painful.
First of all, we'll keep callbacks in an alist called *callbacks*:
(defvar *callbacks* '())
Here's a function which clears the alist of callbacks
(defun initialize-callbacks ()
(setf *callbacks* '())
(values)
Here is the function that installs a callback. It does this by searching the list to see if there is a callback with the given name, and if there is then replacing it, and otherwise installing a new one. Like all the functions in the functional layer lets us specify the test function which will let us know if two callback names are the same: by default this is #'eql which will work for symbols and numbers, but not for strings. Symbols are probably a better choice for the names of callbacks than strings, but we'll cope with that below.
(defun install-callback (name function &key (test #'eql))
(let ((found (assoc name *callbacks* :test test)))
(if found
(setf (cdr found) function)
(push (cons name function) *callbacks*)))
name)
Here is a function to find a callback, returning the function object, or nil if there is no callback with that name.
(defun find-callback (name &key (test #'eql))
(cdr (assoc name *callbacks* :test test)))
And a function to remove a named callback. This doesn't tell you if it did anything: perhaps it should.
(defun remove-callback (name &key (test #'eql))
(setf *callbacks* (delete name *callbacks* :key #'car :test test))
name)
Now comes the macro layer. The syntax of this is going to be (define-callback name arguments ...), so it looks a bit like a function definition.
There are three things to know about this macro.
It is a bit clever: because you can know at macro-expansion time what sort of thing the name of the callback is, you can decide then and there what test to use when installing the callback, and it does this. If the name is a symbol it also wraps a block named by the symbol around the body of the function definition, so it smells a bit more like a function defined by defun: in particular you can use return-from in the body. It does not do this if the name is not a symbol.
It is not quite clever enough: in particular it does not deal with docstrings in any useful way (it ought to pull them out of the block I think). I am not sure this matters.
The switch to decide the test uses expressions like '#'eql which reads as (quote (function eql)): that is to avoid wiring in functions into the expansion because functions are not externalisable objects in CL. However I am not sure I have got this right: I think what is there is safe but it may not be needed.
So, here it is
(defmacro define-callback (name arguments &body body)
`(install-callback ',name
,(if (symbolp name)
`(lambda ,arguments
(block ,name
,#body))
`(lambda ,arguments
,#body))
:test ,(typecase name
(string '#'string=)
(symbol '#'eql)
(number '#'=)
(t '#'equal))))
And finally here are two different callbacks being defined:
(define-callback "foo" (x)
(+ x 3))
(define-callback foo (x)
(return-from foo (+ x 1)))
These lists are called assoc lists in Lisp.
CL-USER 120 > (defvar *foo* '(("c1" . c1) ("c2" . c2)))
*FOO*
CL-USER 121 > (setf *foo* (acons "c0" `c1 *foo*))
(("c0" . C1) ("c1" . C1) ("c2" . C2))
CL-USER 122 > (assoc "c1" *foo* :test #'equal)
("c1" . C1)
You can write macros for that, but why? Macros are advanced Lisp and you might want to get the basics right, first.
Some issues with you example you might want to check out:
what are assoc lists?
what are useful key types in assoc lists?
why you don't need to quote symbols in data lists
variables are not quoted
data lists need to be quoted
You can just as easy create such lists for callbacks without macros. We can imagine a function create-callback, which would be used like this:
(create-callback 'callback1 "command1"
(lambda (arg)
(whatever the function does)))
Now, why would you use a macro instead of a plain function?
In the end, assisted by the responders above, I got it down to something like:
(defmacro mk-make-command (name &rest body)
(let ((func-sym (intern (format "mk-cmd-%s" name))))
(mk-register-command name func-sym)
`(defun ,func-sym (args &rest rest)
(progn
,#body))))
I am trying to solve the last part of question 4.4 of the Structure and Interpretation of computer programming; the task is to implement or as a syntactic transformation. Only elementary syntactic forms are defined; quote, if, begin, cond, define, apply and lambda.
(or a b ... c) is equal to the first true value or false if no value is true.
The way I want to approach it is to transform for example (or a b c) into
(if a a (if b b (if c c false)))
the problem with this is that a, b, and c would be evaluated twice, which could give incorrect results if any of them had side-effects. So I want something like a let
(let ((syma a))
(if syma syma (let ((symb b))
(if symb symb (let ((symc c))
(if (symc symc false)) )) )) )
and this in turn could be implemented via lambda as in Exercise 4.6. The problem now is determining symbols syma, symb and symc; if for example the expression b contains a reference to the variable syma, then the let will destroy the binding. Thus we must have that syma is a symbol not in b or c.
Now we hit a snag; the only way I can see out of this hole is to have symbols that cannot have been in any expression passed to eval. (This includes symbols that might have been passed in by other syntactic transformations).
However because I don't have direct access to the environment at the expression I'm not sure if there is any reasonable way of producing such symbols; I think Common Lisp has the function gensym for this purpose (which would mean sticking state in the metacircular interpreter, endangering any concurrent use).
Am I missing something? Is there a way to implement or without using gensym? I know that Scheme has it's own hygenic macro system, but I haven't grokked how it works and I'm not sure whether it's got a gensym underneath.
I think what you might want to do here is to transform to a syntactic expansion where the evaluation of the various forms aren't nested. You could do this, e.g., by wrapping each form as a lambda function and then the approach that you're using is fine. E.g., you can do turn something like
(or a b c)
into
(let ((l1 (lambda () a))
(l2 (lambda () b))
(l3 (lambda () c)))
(let ((v1 (l1)))
(if v1 v1
(let ((v2 (l2)))
(if v2 v2
(let ((v3 (l3)))
(if v3 v3
false)))))))
(Actually, the evaluation of the lambda function calls are still nested in the ifs and lets, but the definition of the lambda functions are in a location such that calling them in the nested ifs and lets doesn't cause any difficulty with captured bindings.) This doesn't address the issue of how you get the variables l1–l3 and v1–v3, but that doesn't matter so much, none of them are in scope for the bodies of the lambda functions, so you don't need to worry about whether they appear in the body or not. In fact, you can use the same variable for all the results:
(let ((l1 (lambda () a))
(l2 (lambda () b))
(l3 (lambda () c)))
(let ((v (l1)))
(if v v
(let ((v (l2)))
(if v v
(let ((v (l3)))
(if v v
false)))))))
At this point, you're really just doing loop unrolling of a more general form like:
(define (functional-or . functions)
(if (null? functions)
false
(let ((v ((first functions))))
(if v v
(functional-or (rest functions))))))
and the expansion of (or a b c) is simply
(functional-or (lambda () a) (lambda () b) (lambda () c))
This approach is also used in an answer to Why (apply and '(1 2 3)) doesn't work while (and 1 2 3) works in R5RS?. And none of this required any GENSYMing!
In SICP you are given two ways of implementing or. One that handles them as special forms which is trivial and one as derived expressions. I'm unsure if they actually thought you would see this as a problem, but you can do it by implementing gensym or altering variable? and how you make derived variables like this:
;; a unique tag to identify special variables
(define id (vector 'id))
;; a way to make such variable
(define (make-var x)
(list id x))
;; redefine variable? to handle macro-variables
(define (variable? exp)
(or (symbol? exp)
(tagged-list? exp id)))
;; makes combinations so that you don't evaluate
;; every part twice in case of side effects (set!)
(define (or->combination terms)
(if (null? terms)
'false
(let ((tmp (make-var 'tmp)))
(list (make-lambda (list tmp)
(list (make-if tmp
tmp
(or->combination (cdr terms)))))
(car terms)))))
;; My original version
;; This might not be good since it uses backquotes not introduced
;; until chapter 5 and uses features from exercise 4.6
;; Though, might be easier to read for some so I'll leave it.
(define (or->combination terms)
(if (null? terms)
'false
(let ((tmp (make-var 'tmp)))
`(let ((,tmp ,(car terms)))
(if ,tmp
,tmp
,(or->combination (cdr terms)))))))
How it works is that make-var creates a new list every time it is called, even with the same argument. Since it has id as it's first element variable? will identify it as a variable. Since it's a list it will only match in variable lookup with eq? if it is the same list, so several nested or->combination tmp-vars will all be seen as different by lookup-variable-value since (eq? (list) (list)) => #f and special variables being lists they will never shadow any symbol in code.
This is influenced by eiod, by Al Petrofsky, which implements syntax-rules in a similar manner. Unless you look at others implementations as spoilers you should give it a read.
How would you implement your own set! function in Scheme? A set! function is a destructive procedure that changes a value that is defined taking into account the previous value.
As noted in the comments, set! is a primitive in Scheme that must be provided by the implementation. Similarly, you can't implement the assignment operator, =, in most programming languages. In Common Lisp, setf can be extended (using setf-expanders) to allow (setf form value) to work on new kinds of forms.
Because Scheme's set! only modifies variable bindings (like Common Lisp's setq), it is still worth asking how can we implement functions like set-car! and other structural modifiers. This could be seen, in one sense, as a generalization of assignment to variables, but because lexical variables (along with closures) are sufficient to represent arbitrarily complex structures, it can also be seen as a more specialized case. In Scheme (aside from built in primitives like arrays), mutation of object fields is a specialization, because objects can be implemented by lexical closures, and implemented in terms of set!. This is a typical exercise given when showing how structures, e.g., cons cells, can be implemented using lexical closures alone. Here's an example that shows the implementation of single-value mutable cells::
(define (make-cell value)
(lambda (op)
(case op
((update)
(lambda (new-value)
(set! value new-value)))
((retrieve)
(lambda ()
value)))))
(define (set-value! cell new-value)
((cell 'update) new-value))
(define (get-value cell)
((cell 'retrieve)))
Given these definitions, we can create a cell, that starts with the value 4, update the value to 8 using our set-value!, and retrieve the new value:
(let ((c (make-cell 4)))
(set-value! c 8)
(get-value c))
=> 8
As has been mentioned, set! is a primitive and can't be implemented as a procedure. To really understand how it works under the hood, I suggest you take a look at the inner workings of a Lisp interpreter. Here's a great one to start: the metacircular evaluator in SICP, in particular the section titled "Assignments and definitions". Here's an excerpt of the parts relevant for the question:
(define (eval exp env)
(cond ...
((assignment? exp) (eval-assignment exp env))
...
(else (error "Unknown expression type -- EVAL" exp))))
(define (assignment? exp)
(tagged-list? exp 'set!))
(define (eval-assignment exp env)
(set-variable-value! (assignment-variable exp)
(eval (assignment-value exp) env)
env)
'ok)
(define (set-variable-value! var val env)
(define (env-loop env)
(define (scan vars vals)
(cond ((null? vars)
(env-loop (enclosing-environment env)))
((eq? var (car vars))
(set-car! vals val))
(else (scan (cdr vars) (cdr vals)))))
(if (eq? env the-empty-environment)
(error "Unbound variable -- SET!" var)
(let ((frame (first-frame env)))
(scan (frame-variables frame)
(frame-values frame)))))
(env-loop env))
In the end, a set! operation is just a mutation of a binding's value in the environment. Because a modification at this level is off-limits for a "normal" procedure, it has to be implemented as a special form.
Can't, can't, can't. Everyone is so negative! You can definitely do this in Racket. All you need to do is to define your own "lambda" macro, that introduces mutable cells in place of all arguments, and introduces identifier macros for all of those arguments, so that when they're used as regular varrefs they work correctly. And a set! macro that prevents the expansion of those identifier macros, so that they can be mutated.
Piece of cake!
set! modifies a binding between a symbol and a location (anyting really). Compilers and Interpreters would treat set! differently.
An interpreter would have an environment which is a mapping between symbols and values. Strictly set! changes the value of the first occurrence of the symbol to point to the result of the evaluation of the second operand. In many implementations you cannot set! something that is not already bound. In Scheme it is expected that the variable is already bound. Reading SICP or Lisp in small pieces and playing with examples would make you a master implementer of interpreters.
In a compilers situation you don't really need a symbol table. You can keep evaluated operands on a stack and set! need either change what the stack location pointed to or if it's a free variable in a closure you can use assignment conversion. E.g. it could be boxed to a box or a cons.
(define (gen-counter start delta)
(lambda ()
(let ((cur start))
(set! start (+ cur delta))
cur)))
Might be translated to:
(define (gen-counter start delta)
(let ((start (cons start '()))
(lambda ()
(let ((cur (car start)))
(set-car! start (+ cur delta))
cur)))))
You might want to read Control-Flow Analysis of Higher-Order Languages where this method is used together with lots of information on compiler technique.
If you are implementing a simple interpreter, then it is not all that hard. Your environment will map from identifiers to their values (or syntactic keywords to their transformers). The identifier->value mapping will need to account for possible value changes. As such:
(define (make-cell value)
`(CELL ,value))
(define cell-value cadr)
(define (cell-value-set! cell value)
(set-car! (cdr cell) value))
...
((set-stmt? e)
(let ((name (cadr e))
(value (interpret (caddr e) env)))
(let ((cell (env-lookup name)))
(assert (cell? cell))
(cell-value-set! cell value)
'return-value-for-set!)))
...
With two other changes being that when you bind an identifier to a value (like in a let or lambda application) you need to extend the environment with something like:
(env-extend name (cell value) env)
and also when retrieving a value you'll need to use cell-value.
Of course, only mutable identifiers need a cell, but for a simple interpreter allocating a cell for all identifier values is fine.
In scheme there are 2 "global" environments.
There is an environment where you store your highest defined symbols and there is another environment where are stored the primitive functions and the global variables that represent parameters of the system.
When you write something like (set! VAR VAL), the interpreter will look for the binding of VAR.
You cannot use set! on a variable that was not bound. The binding is done either by define or by lambda or by the system for the primitive operators.
Binding means allocating a location in some environment. So the binding function has the signature symbol -> address.
Coming back to set!, the interpreter will look in the environment where VAR is bound. First it looks in local environment (created by lambda), then it its local parent environment, and so on, then in global environment, then in system environment (in that order) until it finds an environment frame that contains a binding for VAR.
I am working on a genetic programming hobby project.
I have a function/macro setup that, when evaluated in a setq/setf form, will generate a list that will look something like this.
(setq trees (make-trees 2))
==> (+ x (abs x))
Then it will get bound out to a lambda function #<FUNCTION :LAMBDA (X) ... > via strategic use of functions/macros
However, I want to get a bit more effective with this than manually assigning to variables, so I wrote something like this:
(setq sample
(let* ((trees (make-trees 2))
(tree-bindings (bind-trees trees))
(evaluated-trees (eval-fitness tree-bindings))))
(list (trees tree-bindings evaluated-trees)))
However, I get EVAL: trees has no value when I place this in a let form. My suspicion is that the macro expansions don't get fully performed in a LET as compared to a SETF, but that doesn't make sense to me.
What is the cause of this issue?
--- edit: yanked my code and put the whole file in a pastebin ---
Supposing that I decide that a setq isn't going to do it for me and I write a simple function to do it:
(defun generate-sample ()
(let ((twiggs (make-trees 2)))
(let ((tree-bindings (bind-trees twiggs)))
(let ((evaluated-trees (eval-fitness tree-bindings)))
(list twiggs tree-bindings evaluated-trees)))))
This yields an explosion of ...help file error messages (??!?)... and "eval: variable twiggs has no value", which stems from the bind-trees definition on SLIME inspection.
I am reasonably sure that I've completely hosed my macros. http://pastebin.org/673619
(Setq make-trees 2) sets the value of the variable make-trees to 2, then returns 2.
I do not see a reason for a macro in what you describe. Is it true that your make-trees creates a single random tree, which can be interpreted as a program? Just define this as a function with defun. I am thinking of something like this:
(defun make-tree (node-number)
(if (= node-number 1)
(make-leaf)
(cons (get-random-operator)
(mapcar #'make-tree
(random-partition (- node-number 1))))))
Let and setq do totally different things. Setq assigns a value to an existing variable, while let creates a new lexical scope with a number of lexical bindings.
I think that you should present more of your code; currently, your question does not make a lot of sense.
Update:
I will fix your snippet's indentation to make things clearer:
(setq sample
(let* ((trees (make-trees 2))
(tree-bindings (bind-trees trees))
(evaluated-trees (eval-fitness tree-bindings))))
(list (trees tree-bindings evaluated-trees)))
Now, as written before, let* establishes lexical bindings. These
are only in scope within its body:
(setq sample
(let* ((trees (make-trees 2))
(tree-bindings (bind-trees trees))
(evaluated-trees (eval-fitness tree-bindings)))
;; here trees, tree-bindings, and evaluated-trees are bound
) ; end of let* body
;; here trees, tree-bindings, and evaluated trees are not in scope anymore
(list (trees tree-bindings evaluated-trees)))
That last line is spurious, too. If those names were bound, it would
return a list of one element, which would be the result of evaluating
the function trees with tree-bindings and evaluated-trees as
arguments.
You might get what you want like this:
(setq sample
(let* ((trees (make-trees 2))
(tree-bindings (bind-trees trees))
(evaluated-trees (eval-fitness tree-bindings)))
(list trees tree-bindings evaluated-trees)))
Another update:
The purpose of macros is to eliminate repeated code when that elimination is not possible with functions. One frequent application is when dealing with places, and you also need them to define new control constructs. As long as you do not see that something cannot work as a function, do not use a macro for it.
Here is some code that might help you:
(defun make-tree-lambda (depth)
(list 'lambda '(x)
(new-tree depth)))
(defun make-tree-function (lambda-tree)
(eval lambda-tree))
(defun eval-fitness (lambda-form-list input-output-list)
"Determines how well the lambda forms approach the wanted function
by comparing their output with the wanted output in the supplied test
cases. Returns a list of mean quadratic error sums."
(mapcar (lambda (lambda-form)
(let* ((actual-results (mapcar (make-tree-function lambda-form)
(mapcar #'first input-output-list)))
(differences (mapcar #'-
actual-results
(mapcar #'second input-output-list)))
(squared-differences (mapcar #'square
differences)))
(/ (reduce #'+ squared-differences)
(length squared-differences))))
lambda-form-list))
(defun tree-fitness (tree-list input-output-list)
"Creates a list of lists, each inner list is (tree fitness). Input
is a list of trees, and a list of test cases."
(mapcar (lambda (tree fitness)
(list tree fitness))
tree-list
(eval-fitness (mapcar #'make-tree-lambda tree-list)
input-output-list)))