I'm trying to write a macro that will let me streamline the definition of multiple top-level variables in one single expression.
The idea was to make it work similar to how let works:
(defparameters ((*foo* 42)
(*bar* 31)
(*baz* 99)))
I tried using the following, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
(defmacro defparameters (exprs)
(dolist (expr exprs)
(let ((name (car expr))
(exp (cadr expr)))
`(defparameter ,name ,exp))))
I've tried using macroexpand but it doesn't seem to expand at all.
What am I doing wrong? and how can I fix it?
The return value of a dolist is given by its optional third argument, so your macro returns the default of nil.
Macros only return one form, so when you have multiple things, such as your series of defparameters, you need to wrap them all in some form and return that. progn will be suitable here. For Example:
(defmacro defparameters (exprs)
`(progn ,#(loop for (name exp) in exprs
collect `(defparameter ,name ,exp))))
Related
I am trying to learn Common Lisp with the book Common Lisp: A gentle introduction to Symbolic Computation. In addition, I am using SBCL, Emacs, and Slime.
In the last chapter, on Macros, the author presents examples to re-write the built-in incf macro. He teaches the concept with two different approaches: using back-quote notation and without it. Such as:
(defmacro list-notation-my-incf (x)
(list 'setq x (list '+ x 1)))
(defmacro backquote-notation-my-incf (x)
`(setq ,x (+ ,x 1)))
Later, the author introduces another example:
In the example below, TWO-FROM-ONE is a macro that takes a function
name and another object as arguments; it expands into a call to the
function with two arguments, both of which are the quoted object.
He only uses back-quote character to do it:
(defmacro two-from-one (func object)
`(,func ',object ',object))
And it works as expected:
CL-USER> (two-from-one cons stack-overflow)
(STACK-OVERFLOW . STACK-OVERFLOW)
Using slime-macroexpad-1, I have:
(CONS 'STACK-OVERFLOW 'STACK-OVERFLOW)
As an exercise that I created for myself, I tried doing the same, but avoiding the back-quote notation. Unfortunately, I could not make it work:
(defmacro list-two-from-one (func object)
(list func (quote object) (quote object)))
Slime throws the error:
The variable OBJECT is unbound.
[Condition of type UNBOUND-VARIABLE]
Doing a macro expansion, I see:
(CONS OBJECT OBJECT)
If I try a different approach, it seems to be closer, but it does not work either:
(defmacro list-two-from-one (func object)
(list func object object))
Throws the error:
The variable STACK-OVERFLOW is unbound.
[Condition of type UNBOUND-VARIABLE]
And, finally, the macro expansion indicates:
(CONS STACK-OVERFLOW STACK-OVERFLOW)
I feel stuck. How do I successfully re-write the macro without using back-quote notation?
Thanks.
What you are looking for is something like
(defmacro list-two-from-one (func object)
(list func (list 'quote object) (list 'quote object)))
basically, the body of a macro should return the code, that, when evaluated, produces the desired result.
I.e., the macro body should produce (CONS 'STACK-OVERFLOW 'STACK-OVERFLOW).
Since 'a is the same as (quote a), you want your macro to produce
(CONS (QUOTE STACK-OVERFLOW) (QUOTE STACK-OVERFLOW))
which is what my defmacro above returns.
Your macro should expand to:
CL-USER 10 > (macroexpand '(two-from-one2 cons stack-overflow))
(CONS (QUOTE STACK-OVERFLOW) (QUOTE STACK-OVERFLOW))
So create lists with quote like this:
(defmacro two-from-one2 (func object)
(list func (list 'quote object) (list 'quote object)))
Test:
CL-USER 9 > (two-from-one2 cons stack-overflow)
(STACK-OVERFLOW . STACK-OVERFLOW)
Based on the example provide in the practical common lisp reference, I define a macro to create a class as followed.
(defmacro define-class (class-name class-slot)
`(defclass ,class-name ()
,(mapcar #'slot->defclass-slot class-slot))))
The function slot->declass-slot take a single argument and generate a standard line describing a slot in a class. The code is the following:
(defun slot->defclass-slot (spec)
`(,spec :initarg ,(as-keyword spec) :accessor ,spec :initform 0))
For example,
(slot->defclass-slot 'nom)
(NOM :INITARG :NOM :ACCESSOR NOM :INITFORM 0)
All this work fine, when I create a class 'model' as follow:
(define-class model (nom id))
But suppose that I define a parameter instead.
(defparameter *test* '(nom id))
(define-class model *test*)
Then, the code end-up in an error:
The value *TEST* is not of type LIST.
What is wrong?
Your define-class macro does not evaluate its class-slots argument.
You can "fix" your code like this:
(defmacro define-class (class-name class-slots)
`(eval
`(defclass ,',class-name ()
,#(mapcar #'slot->defclass-slot ,class-slots))))
(macroexpand-1 '(define-class model '(nom id)))
(defparameter *test* '(nom id))
(define-class model *test*)
Note that you now have to quote the literal second argument to define-class.
Note also that you are now using eval (for a good reason, in this case).
Note finally that I seriously doubt that you truly want to do this. Chances are you don't need this level of dynamism, and you are just complicating your life for no good reason.
E.g., if you just want to get the list of class slots (using your *test* variable), you should use MOP instead.
In fact you can make your macro expand to the function ensure-class:
> (mop:ensure-class 'foo :direct-slots '((:name a)))
#<STANDARD-CLASS FOO>
but this relies on a somewhat brazen assumption that your implementation is MOP-compliant.
(defparameter *test* '(nom id))
(define-class model *test*)
You shouldn't try to do this, for the same reason that you never try to do:
(with-open-file '(...)
...)
The point of the macro is to not evaluate the arguments in order that you can do something with them. What you can do instead, if you do for some reason, need both a macro- version and non-macro- version, is to define the macro functionality in terms of a function, and then wrap the function in a macro when you need a macro. E.g., (for a not-particularly robust) with-open-file):
(defun %with-open-file (filename function &rest args)
(let ((file (apply 'open filename args)))
(prog1 (funcall function file)
(close file))))
(defmacro with-open-file ((var filename &rest args) &body body)
`(%with-open-file ,filename
(lambda (,var) ,#body)
,#args))
Then you can use the macro-version when you want it, and the function-version when you want it. In your case, though, that's not a perfect solution, since you're expanding to another macro call.
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.
I'm trying to write a macro in Lisp that re-implements let using itself. This is a trivial exercise which has no practical purpose; however after giving a response to a related question, I realized I should probably learn more about macros. They're touted as one of the great things about Lisp, but I rarely use them.
Anyway, here's what I tried first:
(defmacro mylet (args &rest exp) `(let ,args (dolist (x ,exp) x)))
but when I try something like:
(mylet ((a 5) (b 2)) (print (+ a b)))
this throws up an error:
#1=(PRINT (+ A B)) is not a symbol or lambda expression in the form (#1#) .
args (a and b) are set properly, but the print statement doesn't work. I think it's because I'm using two levels of indirection-- referring to a variable that I've created within the macro. But I can't seem to figure out how to fix it! Any ideas?
Your macro expands to:
(LET ((A 5) (B 2))
(DOLIST (X ((PRINT (+ A B)))) X))
which is invalid because ((PRINT (+ A B))) is not a valid expression. There is also an issue that using an interned symbol in macro expansion can lead to variable capture, but that is not directly relevant (read more in PCL).
Using DOLIST here is unnecessary, and compilcated to get right (you would have to convert all subforms to anonymous function in order to stick them in a list, funcall them in sequence and then store the final result in order to conform to PROGN behaviour). You can just use PROGN, or, since LET includes an implicit PROGN, just splice the body using the ,# feature of backquote mechanism:
(defmacro mylet (args &body exp) `(let ,args ,(cons 'progn exp)))
(defmacro mylet (args &body exp) `(let ,args ,#exp))
I am quite new to Common Lisp and programming, and I'm trying to write a certain function that turns all non-nil args into an alist. The only way I can think of so far is:
(let ((temp nil))
(if arg1
(setf temp (acons 'arg1 arg1 nil)))
(if arg2
(setf temp (acons 'arg2 arg2 temp)))
...
(if arg20-ish
(setf temp (acons 'arg20-ish arg20-ish temp)))
(do-something-with temp))
which does not seem very elegant, it would be messy with many arguments and when these need to be changed. I am looking for a smarter way to do this, both for the sake of writing this particular function and for learning how to think in Lisp and/or functional programming.
The tricky part for me is figuring out how to get the names of the arguments or what symbol to use, without hand coding each case. If &rest provided arg names it would be easy to filter out NILs with loop or mapcar, but since it doesn't, I can't see how to "automate" this.
I'm totally interested in other solutions than the one described, if people think this way is unnatural.
Edit: Below is an example of what I am trying to do:
An object is created, with a non-fixed number of data pairs and some tags, e.g.:
user = "someone"
creation-time = (get-universal-time)
color-of-sky = "blue"
temperature-in-celsius = 32
language = "Common Lisp"
...
tags = '("one" "two" "three")
These properties (i.e. key/arg names) could be different each time. The new object will then be added to a collection; I thought the array might work well since I want constant access time and only need a numeric ID.
The collection will hold more and more such custom objects, indefinitely.
I want to be able to quickly access all objects matching any combination of any of the tags used in these objects.
Since the array is supposed to store more and more data over a long period, I don't want to parse every item in it each time I need to search for a tag. Thus I also store the index of each object with a given tag in a hash-table, under the tag name. I have written this function, what I find difficult is figuring out how to collect the data and turn it into an alist or anything that I can easily parse, index, and store.
This macro will define a function that turns its non-nil arguments into an alist bound during execution of the body:
(defmacro defnamed (fun-name alist-sym (&rest args) &body body)
`(defun ,fun-name (,#args)
(let ((,alist-sym))
,#(mapcar
(lambda (s)
`(when ,s
(push (cons ',s ,s) ,alist-sym)))
(reverse args))
,#body)))
Demonstration:
(defnamed make-my alist (a b c)
alist)
(make-my 1 NIL 3)
=> ((A . 1) (C . 3))
Here's a sort of solution using macros:
(defmacro named-args (fun-name alist-sym (&rest syms) &body body)
`(defun ,fun-name (&key ,#syms)
(declare (special ,#syms))
(let ((,alist-sym
(loop
for s in ',syms
collecting (cons s (symbol-value s)))))
,#body)))
You can then use it with something like
(named-args f u (a b c)
(format t "~A~%" u))
which expands to
(DEFUN F (&KEY A B C)
(DECLARE (SPECIAL A B C))
(LET ((U
(LOOP FOR S IN '(A B C)
COLLECTING (CONS S (SYMBOL-VALUE S)))))
(FORMAT T "~A~%" U)))
Finally, calling will give
(f :a 3) => ((A . 3) (B) (C))
Note that we need the special declaration otherwise symbol-value doesn't work (you need a global binding for symbol-value). I couldn't find a way to get rid of that.
Looking at your question again, it looks like you actually don't want the keyword arguments that didn't get passed. In which case you could parse a &rest argument (although that's a flat list, so you'd need to map along it in twos) or you could modify the macro as follows:
(defmacro named-args (fun-name alist-sym (&rest syms) &body body)
`(defun ,fun-name (&key ,#syms)
(declare (special ,#syms))
(let ((,alist-sym
(loop
for s in ',syms
when (symbol-value s)
collecting (cons s (symbol-value s)))))
,#body)))
and then you get
(f :a 3) => ((A . 3))