returning a value in lisp programming - lisp

I have a function
(defun read-as-list (filename)
(defparameter parlist(list nil) )
(let ((in (open filename :if-does-not-exist nil)))
(when in
(loop for line = (read-line in nil)
while line do
(defparameter mylist line)
(push mylist (cdr (last parlist)))
;(append parlist (list mylist))
;(print mylist)
;(format t "~a~%" line)
)
(close in)
)
)
(print parlist)
(return-from read-as-list parlist)
)
which simply takes a file name and reads it into a nested list and returns the list
I call it in the down function like:
(defun test_on_test_data ()
(print "....................................................")
(print "Testing ....")
(print "....................................................")
(let (con (read-as-list "document1.txt"))
(print con)
)
)
(test_on_test_data)
in the function test-on-test-data, con prints nil and it does not call the function read-as-list
instead of printing the content of the files as list it prints nil.
can someone please help me out on this.

Here is an example function that you can use to test how to iterate over lines in a file. It takes a pathname designator and a callback function, and execute the function for all lines in a file. The function must accept a single parameter, the line being read.
(defun maplines (function path)
(with-open-file (in path)
(loop for line = (read-line in nil nil)
while line
do (funcall function line))))
Note how the code is indented, and how the opening and closing of the file is handled using with-open-file.
Also, there is no defparameter inside the function's body since that form is used to declare global variables.
There is no need to use return since the last value in the function body is automatically the value of the function call.
Then, you can for example call it as follows:
(maplines #'print "/tmp/test.data")
Unlike in your code, if the file does not exist, an error will be signaled. In your case you silently ignored errors by giving nil and doing nothing on a null stream.
Finally, all you need is to use a function that stores the lines being read. Or if you don't know yet how to do that, modify the above snippet to remove the call to funcall and use collect in the loop. You will get a list of all lines.

Related

Function returns list but prints out NIL in LISP

I'm reading a file char by char and constructing a list which is consist of list of letters of words. I did that but when it comes to testing it prints out NIL. Also outside of test function when i print out list, it prints nicely. What is the problem here? Is there any other meaning of LET keyword?
This is my read fucntion:
(defun read-and-parse (filename)
(with-open-file (s filename)
(let (words)
(let (letter)
(loop for c = (read-char s nil)
while c
do(when (char/= c #\Space)
(if (char/= c #\Newline) (push c letter)))
do(when (or (char= c #\Space) (char= c #\Newline) )
(push (reverse letter) words)
(setf letter '())))
(reverse words)
))))
This is test function:
(defun test_on_test_data ()
(let (doc (read-and-parse "document2.txt"))
(print doc)
))
This is input text:
hello
this is a test
You're not using let properly. The syntax is:
(let ((var1 val1)
(var2 val2)
...)
body)
If the initial value of the variable is NIL, you can abbreviate (varN nil) as just varN.
You wrote:
(let (doc
(read-and-parse "document2.txt"))
(print doc))
Based on the above, this is using the abbreviation, and it's equivalent to:
(let ((doc nil)
(read-and-parse "document2.txt"))
(print doc))
Now you can see that this binds doc to NIL, and binds the variable read-and-parse to "document2.txt". It never calls the function. The correct syntax is:
(let ((doc (read-and-parse "document2.txt")))
(print doc))
Barmar's answer is the right one. For interest, here is a version of read-and-parse which makes possibly-more-idiomatic use of loop, and also abstracts out the 'is the character white' decision since this is something which is really not usefully possible in portable CL as the standard character repertoire is absurdly poor (there's no tab for instance!). I'm sure there is some library available via Quicklisp which deals with this better than the below.
I think this is fairly readable: there's an outer loop which collects words, and an inner loop which collects characters into a word, skipping over whitespace until it finds the next word. Both use loop's collect feature to collect lists forwards. On the other hand, I feel kind of bad every time I use loop (I know there are alternatives).
By default this collects the words as lists of characters: if you tell it to it will collect them as strings.
(defun char-white-p (c)
;; Is a character white? The fallback for this is horrid, since
;; tab &c are not a standard characters. There must be a portability
;; library with a function which does this.
#+LispWorks (lw:whitespace-char-p c)
#+CCL (ccl:whitespacep c) ;?
#-(or LispWorks CCL)
(member char (load-time-value
(mapcan (lambda (n)
(let ((c (name-char n)))
(and c (list c))))
'("Space" "Newline" "Page" "Tab" "Return" "Linefeed"
;; and I am not sure about the following, but, well
"Backspace" "Rubout")))))
(defun read-and-parse (filename &key (as-strings nil))
"Parse a file into a list of words, splitting on whitespace.
By default the words are returned as lists of characters. If
AS-STRINGS is T then they are coerced to strings"
(with-open-file (s filename)
(loop for maybe-word = (loop with collecting = nil
for c = (read-char s nil)
;; carry on until we hit EOF, or we
;; hit whitespace while collecting a
;; word
until (or (not c) ;EOF
(and collecting (char-white-p c)))
;; if we're not collecting and we see
;; a non-white character, then we're
;; now collecting
when (and (not collecting) (not (char-white-p c)))
do (setf collecting t)
when collecting
collect c)
while (not (null maybe-word))
collect (if as-strings
(coerce maybe-word 'string)
maybe-word))))

LISP break a function execution

How can I break a function execution in LISP if I get a certain value?
For example, I have a main function like this:
(defun recognize-a (arg input)
(if (equal (recognize-b arg input) '())
T
NIL
))
I want to break the function recognize-b in case the input is an empty list, without passing any values to the main function:
(defun recognize-b (fa input)
(if (equal input '())
<<<WANTED BREAK>>>
(<Else branch>)))
You can use ERROR to signal an error from RECOGNIZE-B when INPUT is empty.
(defun recognize-b (arg input)
(when (emptyp input)
(error "INPUT is empty!"))
;; Do whatever the function normally does...
:return-value-from-b)
I'll just return :RETURN-VALUE-FROM-B since I don't know what the function is supposed to do. You could define an error type to signal, but by default ERROR will signal a SIMPLE-ERROR.
To handle the error in RECOGNIZE-A, you can use HANDLER-CASE.
(defun recognize-a (arg input)
(handler-case (recognize-b arg input)
(simple-error () t)))
This simply returns the value from RECOGNIZE-B if there was no error, or T if there was.
(recognize-a 10 '(1 2)) ;=> :RETURN-VALUE-FROM-B
(recognize-a 10 '()) ;=> T
There is a good introduction to the condition system in the book Practical Common Lisp, Chapter 19. Beyond Exception Handling: Conditions and Restarts.

Call several functions with the same value

I have various functions and I want to call each function with the same value. For instance,
I have these functions:
(defun OP1 (arg) ( + 1 arg) )
(defun OP2 (arg) ( + 2 arg) )
(defun OP3 (arg) ( + 3 arg) )
And a list containing the name of each function:
(defconstant *OPERATORS* '(OP1 OP2 OP3))
So far, I'm trying:
(defun TEST (argument) (dolist (n *OPERATORS*) (n argument) ) )
I've tried using eval, mapcar, and apply, but these haven't worked.
This is just a simplified example; the program that I'm writing has eight functions that are needed to expand nodes in a search tree, but for the moment, this example should suffice.
Other answers have provided some idiomatic solutions with mapcar. One pointed out that you might want a list of functions (which *operators* isn't) instead of a list of symbols (which *operators* is), but it's OK in Common Lisp to funcall a symbol. It's probably more common to use some kind of mapping construction (e.g., mapcar) for this, but since you've provided code using dolist, I think it's worth looking at how you can do this iteratively, too. Let's cover the (probably more idiomatic) solution with mapping first, though.
Mapping
You have a fixed argument, argument, and you want to be able to take a function function and call it with that `argument. We can abstract this as a function:
(lambda (function)
(funcall function argument))
Now, we want to call this function with each of the operations that you've defined. This is simple to do with mapcar:
(defun test (argument)
(mapcar (lambda (function)
(funcall function argument))
*operators*))
Instead of operators, you could also write '(op1 op2 op3) or (list 'op1 'op2 'op3), which are lists of symbols, or (list #'op1 #'op2 #'op3) which is a list of functions. All of these work because funcall takes a function designator as its first argument, and a function designator is
an object that denotes a function and that is one of: a symbol (denoting the function named by that symbol in the global environment), or a function (denoting itself).
Iteratively
You can do this using dolist. The [documentation for actually shows that dolist has a few more tricks up its sleeve. The full syntax is from the documentation
dolist (var list-form [result-form]) declaration* {tag | statement}*
We don't need to worry about declarations here, and we won't be using any tags, but notice that optional result-form. You can specify a form to produce the value that dolist returns; you don't have to accept its default nil. The common idiom for collecting values into a list in an iterative loop is to push each value into a new list, and then return the reverse of that list. Since the new list doesn't share structure with anything else, we usually reverse it destructively using nreverse. Your loop would become
(defun test (argument)
(let ((results '()))
(dolist (op *operators* (nreverse results))
(push (funcall op argument) results))))
Stylistically, I don't like that let that just introduces a single value, and would probably use an &aux variable in the function (but this is a matter of taste, not correctness):
(defun test (argument &aux (results '()))
(dolist (op *operators* (nreverse results))
(push (funcall op argument) results)))
You could also conveniently use loop for this:
(defun test2 (argument)
(loop for op in *operators*
collect (funcall op argument)))
You can also do somewhat succinctly, but perhaps less readably, using do:
(defun test3a (argument)
(do ((results '() (list* (funcall (first operators) argument) results))
(operators *operators* (rest operators)))
((endp operators) (nreverse results))))
This says that on the first iteration, results and operators are initialized with '() and *operators*, respectively. The loop terminates when operators is the empty list, and whenever it terminates, the return value is (nreverse results). On successive iterations, results is a assigned new value, (list* (funcall (first operators) argument) results), which is just like pushing the next value onto results, and operators is updated to (rest operators).
FUNCALL works with symbols.
From the department of silly tricks.
(defconstant *operators* '(op1 op2 o3))
(defun test (&rest arg)
(setf (cdr arg) arg)
(mapcar #'funcall *operators* arg))
There's a library, which is almost mandatory in any anywhat complex project: Alexandria. It has many useful functions, and there's also something that would make your code prettier / less verbose and more conscious.
Say, you wanted to call a number of functions with the same value. Here's how you'd do it:
(ql:quickload "alexandria")
(use-package :alexandria)
(defun example-rcurry (value)
"Calls `listp', `string' and `numberp' with VALUE and returns
a list of results"
(let ((predicates '(listp stringp numberp)))
(mapcar (rcurry #'funcall value) predicates)))
(example-rcurry 42) ;; (NIL NIL T)
(example-rcurry "42") ;; (NIL T NIL)
(defun example-compose (value)
"Calls `complexp' with the result of calling `sqrt'
with the result of calling `parse-integer' on VALUE"
(let ((predicates '(complexp sqrt parse-integer)))
(funcall (apply #'compose predicates) value)))
(example-compose "0") ;; NIL
(example-compose "-1") ;; T
Functions rcurry and compose are from Alexandria package.

How to explicitly use a standard function?

I'm running into a name collision with iterate and count standard function in the example below:
(defun svs-to-images (file)
(with-open-file (stream file)
(iterate:iter
(iterate:for line #:= (read-line stream nil nil))
(iterate:while line)
(line-to-image
(iterate:iter
(iterate:for c #:in-string line)
(iterate:with word)
(iterate:with pos #:= 0)
(iterate:with result #:= ; ---------\/ here
(make-array (list (1+ (count #\, line)))
:element-type 'fixnum))
(if (char= c #\,)
(setf (aref result pos)
(parse-integer
(coerce (reverse word) 'string))
pos (1+ pos)
word nil)
(setf word (cons c word)))
(iterate:finally result)) 28))))
The error I'm getting is:
csv-parser.lisp:19:5:
error:
during macroexpansion of
(ITERATE:ITER
(ITERATE:FOR LINE #:= ...)
(ITERATE:WHILE LINE)
...).
Use *BREAK-ON-SIGNALS* to intercept:
Iterate, in (COUNT , LINE):
Missing value for LINE keyword
Compilation failed.
And, if I understood it correctly, it is trying to use count as if it was the count driver from iterate, instead of the original function. How would I make it so that the correct count is used?
In comp.lang.lisp Chris Riesbeck offered this as a workaround for a similar question a few years ago:
(remprop 'count 'iter::synonym)
From then you need to use COUNTING as the iterate clause. CL:COUNT then should refer to the Common Lisp function. You would need to recompile the code.
This is a bug/feature of how iterate processes its body.
You can use a version of iterate from rutils - it uses keywords instead of plain symbols, so there will be no symbol clashes.

Treating the values from a list of slots and strings

I want to do a macro in common lisp which is supposed to take in one of its arguments a list made of slots and strings. Here is the prototype :
(defclass time-info ()
((name :initarg name)
(calls :initarg calls)
(second :initarg second)
(consing :initarg consing)
(gc-run-time :initarg gc-run-time)))
(defun print-table (output arg-list time-info-list) ())
The idea is to print a table based on the arg-list which defines its structure. Here is an example of a call to the function:
(print-table *trace-output*
'("|" name "||" calls "|" second "\")
my-time-info-list)
This print a table in ascII on the trace output. The problem, is that I don't know how to explicitely get the elements of the list to use them in the different parts of my macro.
I have no idea how to do this yet, but I'm sure it can be done. Maybe you can help me :)
I would base this on format. The idea is to build a format string
from your arg-list.
I define a helper function for that:
(defun make-format-string-and-args (arg-list)
(let ((symbols ()))
(values (apply #'concatenate 'string
(mapcar (lambda (arg)
(ctypecase arg
(string
(cl-ppcre:regex-replace-all "~" arg "~~"))
(symbol
(push arg symbols)
"~a")))
arg-list))
(nreverse symbols))))
Note that ~ must be doubled in format strings in order to escape them.
The printing macro itself then just produces a mapcar of format:
(defmacro print-table (stream arg-list time-info-list)
(let ((time-info (gensym)))
(multiple-value-bind (format-string arguments)
(make-format-string-and-args arg-list)
`(mapcar (lambda (,time-info)
(format ,stream ,format-string
,#(mapcar (lambda (arg)
(list arg time-info))
arguments)))
,time-info-list)))
You can then call it like this:
(print-table *trace-output*
("|" name "||" calls "|" second "\\")
my-time-info-list)
Please note the following errors in your code:
You need to escape \ in strings.
Second is already a function name exported from the common-lisp
package. You should not clobber that with a generic function.
You need to be more precise with your requirements. Macros and Functions are different things. Arrays and Lists are also different.
We need to iterate over the TIME-INFO-LIST. So that's the first DOLIST.
The table has a description for a line. Each item in the description is either a slot-name or a string. So we iterate over the description. That's the second DOLIST. A string is just printed. A symbol is a slot-name, where we retrieve the slot-value from the current time-info instance.
(defun print-table (stream line-format-description time-info-list)
(dolist (time-info time-info-list)
(terpri stream)
(dolist (slot-or-string line-format-description)
(princ (etypecase slot-or-string
(string slot-or-string)
(symbol (slot-value time-info slot-or-string)))
stream))))
Test:
> (print-table *standard-output*
'("|" name "||" calls "|" second "\\")
(list (make-instance 'time-info
:name "foo"
:calls 100
:second 10)
(make-instance 'time-info
:name "bar"
:calls 20
:second 20)))
|foo||100|10\
|bar||20|20\
First, you probably don't want the quote there, if you're using a macro (you do want it there if you're using a function, however). Second, do you want any padding between your separators and your values? Third, you're probably better off with a function, rather than a macro.
You also seem to be using "array" and "list" interchangeably. They're quite different things in Common Lisp. There are operations that work on generic sequences, but typically you would use one way of iterating over a list and another to iterate over an array.