Swift LLDB is not changing values / has no effect - swift

having a code like this:
var foo: Int = 0
print (foo)
With a breakpoint at the print line... then doing:
(lldb) exp foo = 7
(lldb) p foo
(Int) $R2 = 7
0
print(x) still returns 0 instead of 7. How is that possible?

More details would help, but in general, I have seen this happen in three cases:
1) When you have a let, the compiler is free to replace the let with its value. This is not your case, but for sake of argument, given:
let x = 0
print(x)
The compiler is free to rewrite this as
print(0)
leaving the let binding in only for the sake of the debugger. Now, a let is a let, so writing to it is not exactly a well-defined operation. With that said, C compilers seem to not take that same kind of approach with const values, so that failure mode might surprise somebody
2) If you call a function, the compiler is (essentially) going to emit code to push the arguments on the stack, and then jump to the code for the function. In theory, one would expect the line table in the debug info to guide the debugger to stop before the arguments are pushed. Then,
>> push x
call print
A write to x would actually "mean" something in the context of your print call. But, if the line tables actually make us stop at the call, even if you write to "x", it has already been pushed, and the old value will be used
3) The compiler might actually be using a copy of "foo" that is in a register, but for the sake of debug info, pointing us to a stack copy of "foo" which is actually never used, and only updated when writes to "foo" happen. If that is the case, LLDB will gladly write to the stack, but that won't affect the program's behavior as it is not actually reading from the stack
Fun things to try to figure this out include:
the LLDB disassemble command
(lldb) reg read pc
(lldb) dis -s <value of program counter>
or
(lldb) fr var -L foo
and then read at the memory address (or the register) that LLDB gives out as the location of "foo"
or
in your app, print(x) twice, and see if the second print shows a different value

Related

how to store/replace local variable in debugger lldb in Xcode

I am new to Xcode and came by pycharm. In pycharm, I am able to use watcher to execute the statement and store as local variable in debugger mode. How could I do that same thing from Xcode debugger lldb?
for example
let a = 5
letba = 5
let aPlusb = Self.addFunc(a, b)
after place debugger on line 3. how can i call Self.addFunc() and store into some variable xy
I have tried expression or e under lldb and then po xy but it does not work with error
error: expression failed to parse:
error: <EXPR>:8:1: error: cannot find 'xy' in scope
`xy`
You're right that the expression parser is the command you want to use to create scratch variables that can record values in lldb. There are two ways to do this.
First of all, when you evaluate any expression using lldb's expression parser, lldb creates a "result variable" which stores the result of the expression:
(lldb) expr myVar
(Int) $R0 = 10
This can be used in future expressions, e.g.:
(lldb) expr print($R0)
10
The other way you can do this is to take advantage of the lldb convention that an identifier in an lldb expression which begins with a $ is treated as an lldb "persistent declaration", and can be used in future expressions. Except for a very few exceptions like this, lldb parses expressions exactly as they would be in source code compiled in the context of the current frame. So you just use the same syntax you would use to define the identifier in swift, so:
(lldb) expr var $myVar = 10
(lldb) expr print($myVar)
10
BTW, I'm not being abstruse using "identifier" instead of "variable" above. The same convention holds for other instances of identifiers, e.g. for type and function definitions as well.

How do I write a perl6 macro to enquote text?

I'm looking to create a macro in P6 which converts its argument to a string.
Here's my macro:
macro tfilter($expr) {
quasi {
my $str = Q ({{{$expr}}});
filter-sub $str;
};
}
And here is how I call it:
my #some = tfilter(age < 50);
However, when I run the program, I obtain the error:
Unable to parse expression in quote words; couldn't find final '>'
How do I fix this?
Your use case, converting some code to a string via a macro, is very reasonable. There isn't an established API for this yet (even in my head), although I have come across and thought about the same use case. It would be nice in cases such as:
assert a ** 2 + b ** 2 == c ** 2;
This assert statement macro could evaluate its expression, and if it fails, it could print it out. Printing it out requires stringifying it. (In fact, in this case, having file-and-line information would be a nice touch also.)
(Edit: 007 is a language laboratory to flesh out macros in Perl 6.)
Right now in 007 if you stringify a Q object (an AST), you get a condensed object representation of the AST itself, not the code it represents:
$ bin/007 -e='say(~quasi { 2 + 2 })'
Q::Infix::Addition {
identifier: Q::Identifier "infix:+",
lhs: Q::Literal::Int 2,
rhs: Q::Literal::Int 2
}
This is potentially more meaningful and immediate than outputting source code. Consider also the fact that it's possible to build ASTs that were never source code in the first place. (And people are expected to do this. And to mix such "synthetic Qtrees" with natural ones from programs.)
So maybe what we're looking at is a property on Q nodes called .source or something. Then we'd be able to do this:
$ bin/007 -e='say((quasi { 2 + 2 }).source)'
2 + 2
(Note: doesn't work yet.)
It's an interesting question what .source ought to output for synthetic Qtrees. Should it throw an exception? Or just output <black box source>? Or do a best-effort attempt to turn itself into stringified source?
Coming back to your original code, this line fascinates me:
my $str = Q ({{{$expr}}});
It's actually a really cogent attempt to express what you want to do (turn an AST into its string representation). But I doubt it'll ever work as-is. In the end, it's still kind of based on a source-code-as-strings kind of thinking à la C. The fundamental issue with it is that the place where you put your {{{$expr}}} (inside of a string quote environment) is not a place where an expression AST is able to go. From an AST node type perspective, it doesn't typecheck because expressions are not a subtype of quote environments.
Hope that helps!
(PS: Taking a step back, I think you're doing yourself a disservice by making filter-sub accept a string argument. What will you do with the string inside of this function? Parse it for information? In that case you'd be better off analyzing the AST, not the string.)
(PPS: Moritz++ on #perl6 points out that there's an unrelated syntax error in age < 50 that needs to be addressed. Perl 6 is picky about things being defined before they are used; macros do not change this equation much. Therefore, the Perl 6 parser is going to assume that age is a function you haven't declared yet. Then it's going to consider the < an opening quote character. Eventually it'll be disappointed that there's no >. Again, macros don't rescue you from needing to declare your variables up-front. (Though see #159 for further discussion.))

Ocaml error unbound Value

When i try to evaluate line 2 or 5 of this program, i get "Unbound value carre" or "Unbound value bis".
To evaluate it i use emacs with tuareg, could it be related ?
let carre x = x*x;;
carre(9);;
let bis y = y^y;;
bis("ab");;
For example, here is what i get for line 2 :
# Characters 0-5:
carre(9);;
^^^^^
Error: Unbound value carre
#
The code is very simple so i feel like the problem comes from emacs.
I've tried to change function names, variables names, but nothing worked.
Does anybody see what's wrong here ?
You need to evaluate the first line of your program before the second.
The interpretor doesn't know the definition of carre or bis until you've evaluated it.

Querying from the terminal doesn't print anything

When ran in the command line, this
swipl -g "write(42)" -t "halt"
prints 42 to STDOUT as expected.
However, this
swipl -g "X = 42" -t "halt"
does not print anything, it simply returns.
How do I get it to print what it prints in the REPL (that is, X = 42)?
Note: this is in a Windows terminal. Let me know if this actually works in a Linux terminal.
As expected, X = 42 by itself produces no output whatsoever, because (=)/2 is a completely pure predicate that does not yield any side effects by itself. This is the case on Window, OSX and all other operating systems.
Even if there were a way to obtain and redirect the toplevel output itself, the fact remains that the SWI toplevel is subject to change and you cannot rely on future versions to behave in the same way as it does now. Long term, you will likely be better off to roll your own toplevel and produce exactly the output you want.
It is not so hard to roll your own toplevel. The trick is mainly to use the variable_names/1 option when reading terms, so that you can keep track of the variable names that you want to show in answers. Here is a very simplistic start:
repl :-
read_line_to_codes(current_input, Codes),
read_term_from_codes(Codes, Term, [variable_names(NameVars)]),
call(Term),
report_bindings(NameVars).
repl :- repl.
report_bindings(NameVars) :-
phrase(bindings(NameVars), Bs),
format("~s", [Bs]).
bindings([]) --> [].
bindings([E]) --> name_var(E).
bindings([E1,E2|Rest]) --> name_var(E1), ",\n", bindings([E2|Rest]).
name_var(Name=Var) -->
format_("~w = ~q", [Name,Var]).
format_(Format, Ls) -->
call(format_codes(Format, Ls)).
format_codes(Format, Ls, Cs0, Cs) :-
format(codes(Cs0,Cs), Format, Ls).
Example:
?- repl.
|: X = 4, between(1, 3, Y).
X = 4,
Y = 1
true ;
X = 4,
Y = 2
true ;
X = 4,
Y = 3
true ;
|: X = 7.
X = 7
It is easy to modify this so that it works on terms that are specified as arguments.
Note that the variable_names/1 option is essential for reading terms in such a way, and thanks to the ISO standardization effort an increasing number of implementations provide it for read_term/2 and related predicates.
This ability to read variable names is a requirement for implementing a portable Prolog toplevel!
The main exercise that I leave for you is to check if the quoting is right in all cases and (if desired) to produce answers in such a way that they can always be pasted back on the terminal. To extend this to residual constraints, use copy_term/3 and call_residue_vars/2 to collect pending constraints that you can append to the bindings.

Limiting the amount of information printed by Perl debugger

One of my pet peeves with debugging Perl code (in command line debbugger, perl -d) is the fact that mistakenly printing (via x command) the contents of a huge datastructure is guaranteed to freeze up your terminal for forever and a half while 100s of pages of data are printed. Epecially if that happens across slowish network.
As such, I'd like to be able to limit the amount of data that x prints.
I see two approaches - I'd be willing to try either if someone knows how to do.
Limit the amount of data any single command in debugger prints.
Better yet, somehow replace the built-in x command with a custom Perl method (which would calculate the "size" of the data structure, and refuse to print its contents without confirmation).
I'm specifically asking "how to replace x with custom code" - building a Good Enough "is the data structure too big" Perl method is something I can likely do on my own without too much effort although I see enough pitfalls preventing the "perfect" one from being a fairly frustrating endeavour. Heck, merely doing Data::Dumper->Dump and taking the length of the string might do the trick :)
Please note that I'm perfectly well aware of how to manually avoid the issue by recursively examining layers of datastructure (e.g. print the ref, print the count of keys/array elements, etc...)... the whole point is I want to be able to avoid thoughtlessly typing x $huge_pile_of_data without thinking - or stumbling on a bug populating said huge pile of data into what should be a scalar.
The x command takes an optional argument for the maximum depth to display. That's not quite the same as limiting the amount of data to N pages, but it's definitely useful to prevent overload.
DB<1> %h = (a => { b => { c => 1 } } )
DB<2> x %h
0 'a'
1 HASH(0x1d5ff44)
'b' => HASH(0x1d61424)
'c' => 1
DB<3> x 2 %h
0 'a'
1 HASH(0x1d5ff44)
'b' => HASH(0x1d61424)
You can specify the default depth to print via the o command, e.g.
DB<1>o dumpDepth=1
Add that to your .perldb file to apply it to all debugger sessions.
Otherwise, it looks like the x command invokes DB::dumpit() which is just a wrapper for dumpval.pl (or, more specifically, the main::dumpValue() sub it defines). You could modify/replace that script as you see fit. I'm not sure how you'd make it interactive, though.
The | command in the debugger pipes another command's output to your pager, e.g.
DB<1> |x %huge_datastructure