I am trying to create an automatic 'debugger' for tracing function flow. Because I'm not a god, I do make mistakes, and when I do, I normally end up throwing a bunch of "show" in my functions. What I'm looking to do is create a function that will insert shows prior to each line for each variable used in an expression on that line and any variable assigned to in the previous.
Imagine I have a function f that is throwing an unhelpful error. I would insert
f: debugwrap[f];
after the function definition to insert the appropriate debugging within the lines of function string, parse, and return the augmented function.
I have had success handling the params and simple functions, but where I have trouble is where semicolons do not indicate eol, such as in function calls. Using parse on the function body, I can easily break out all the lines and find the required variables, but once I do that, I need to 'unparse' each line in the function. That unparsing is giving me trouble, especially where functions are translated to what I believe is k - such as "*:".
Simple example with only initial logging:
q)f: {[a;b] a: a xexp b; c: a-first `int$-1#string first table[`symbols]; :c }
q)df: dp[f;";"]
q)df
"{[a;b] show "a is ",string[a]; show "b is ",string[b]; a : a xexp b;c : a - *:`int$-1#$:*:table`symbols;: c;}"
q)parse df
ERROR: *:
What I'm doing now is recursively walking through the parse tree and reconstructing the call. That is painful and not yet yielding results. What I think is the best way is to get the information I need out of each parse subtree, then unparse that subtree and append it to my function string.
Appreciate any help you all can offer.
The best place to see how debugging might be done, is with this code: http://code.kx.com/q/ref/debug/
Related
Background -- I was reading up on accessing shadowed functions, and started playing with builtin . I wrote a little function:
function klear(x)
% go to parent environment...
evalin('base', builtin('clear','x')) ;
end
This throws the error:
Error using clear
Too many output arguments.
I think this happens because evalin demands an output from whatever it's being fed, but clear is one of the functions which has no return value.
So two questions: am I interpreting this correctly, and if so, is there an alternative function that allows me to execute a function in the parent environment (that doesn't require an output)?
Note: I'm fully aware of the arguments against trying to access shadowed funcs (or rather, to avoid naming functions in a way that overload base funcs, etc). This is primarily a question to help me learn what can and can't be done in MATLAB.
Note 2
My original goal was to write an overload function that would require an input argument, to avoid the malware-ish behavior of clear, which defaults to deleting everything. In Q&D pseudocode,
function clear(x)
if ~exist('x','var') return
execute_in_base_env(builtin(clear(x)))
end
There's a couple issues with your clear override:
It will always clear in the base workspace regardless of where it's called from.
It doesn't support multiple inputs, which is a common use case for clear.
Instead I'd have it check for whether it was called from the base workspace, and special-case that for your check for whether it's clearing everything. If some function is calling plain clear to clear all its variables, that's bad practice, but it's still how that function's logic works, and you don't want to break that. Otherwise it could error, or worse, return incorrect results.
So, something like this:
function clear(varargin)
stk = dbstack;
if numel(stk) == 1 && (nargin == 0 || ismember('all', varargin))
fprintf('clear: balking at clearing all vars in base workspace. Nothing cleared.\n');
return;
end
% Check for quoting problems
for i = 1:numel(varargin)
if any(varargin{i} == '''')
error('You have a quote in one of your args. That''s not valid.');
end
end
% Construct a clear() call that works with evalin()
arg_strs = strcat('''', varargin, '''');
arg_strs = [{'''clear'''} arg_strs];
expr = ['builtin(' strjoin(arg_strs, ', '), ')'];
% Do it
evalin('caller', expr);
end
I hope it goes without saying that this is an atrocious hack that I wouldn't recommend in practice. :)
What happens in your code:
evalin('base', builtin('clear','x'));
is that builtin is evaluated in the current context, and because it is used as an argument to evalin, it is expected to produce an output. It is exactly the same as:
ans = builtin('clear','x');
evalin('base',ans);
The error message you see occurs in the first of those two lines of code, not in the second. It is not because of evalin, which does support calling statements that don't produce an output argument.
evalin requires a string to evaluate. You need to build this string:
str = 'builtin(''clear'',''x'')';
evalin('base',ans);
(In MATLAB, the quote character is escaped by doubling it.)
You function thus would look like this:
function clear(var)
try
evalin('base',['builtin(''clear'',''',var,''')'])
catch
% ignore error
end
end
(Inserting a string into another string this way is rather awkward, one of the many reasons I don't like eval and friends).
It might be better to use evalin('caller',...) in this case, so that when you call the new clear from within a function, it deletes something in the function's workspace, not the base one. I think 'base' should only be used from within a GUI that is expected to control variables in the user's workspace, not from a function that could be called anywhere and is expected (by its name in this case) to do something local.
There are reasons why this might be genuinely useful, but in general you should try to avoid the use of clear just as much as the use of eval and friends. clear slows down program execution. It is much easier (both on the user and on the MATLAB JIT) to assign an empty array to a variable to remove its contents from memory (as suggested by rahnema1 in a comment. Your base workspace would not be cluttered with variables if you used function more: write functions, not scripts!
I've made this recursive metod in Scala that returns a list made of all distinct elements of another list.
object es20 extends App{
def filledList:List[Int]=List()
#scala.annotation.tailrec
def distinct(l:List[Int]):List[Int] ={
if (l.isEmpty) filledList
if (filledList.forall(_!=l.head)) l.head::filledList
distinct(l.tail)
}
println(distinct(List(1,1,5,6,6,3,8,3))) //Should print List(1,5,6,3,8)
}
However, when I compile the code and then I run it, there's this exception:
java.util.NoSuchElementException: head of empty list
I thought that this exception was handle by the condition if (l.isEmpty).
How can I fix the code?
In Scala method returns last expression of the block. In your case you have three expressions: two if-expressions which result in unit and call to distinct, so checks will be executed every time you call distinct, no matter if the list is empty or not.
To fix it you can use if / else construct, or pattern match on input list, or make operation on headOption.
Anyway I doubt if this code correct: you trying to check something on 'filledList' which is always empty
You can fix this particular error by inserting else before the second if. However, as mentioned in the other answer, your code isn't correct, and won't work anyway, you need to rewrite it.
Also, I understand, that you are just trying to write this function as an exercise (if not, just do list.distinct), but I submit, that implementing quadratic solutions to trivially linear problems is never a good exercise to begin with.
I work on an Access VBA 2013 application, and this part of the project focuses on form controls and buttons.
I want to lock/unlock control modification thanks to buttons set aside.
For more genericity, I wanted the subs called by the events call homemade functions:
Sub LockAssociateControl(fctName As String, val As Boolean)
Dim code As String
code = "Forms!" & getModuleName & ".Controls!" & fctName & ".Locked = " & CStr(val)
Debug.Print (code) 'just to test
Eval code
End Sub
(getModuleName is also a homemade function that returns the right name of the module calling the function)
For example, this one is called like below:
Private Sub FirstName_Exit(Cancel As Integer)
Call LockAssociateControl("FirstName", True)
End Sub
and in "code" variable, it sets "Forms!Module1.Controls!Name.Locked = True" (with Module1 generated by getModuleName, and Name as the parameter (I haven't found better yet)).
Now I want this code evaluated in order to avoid me from hard coding every event sub.
My problem is that an error occurs at the Eval() line and says:
Error Code: 2770. The object to which you reffered in the Visual Basic procedure as an OLE object is not an OLE object
I've looked around StockOverflow and others forums to find out what's wrong with Eval(), and I found that this function's behavior is not made for what I want. So I tried to find another way to do that, as Evaluate function doesn't exist in Access, etc, but I found nothing really helpful.
I tried to use DoCmd or Call or various transformations on the parameter string of Eval(), but nothing has worked so far...
So here's my question: Do any of you have a solution for that problem? And if not, do you know an alternative not to have to write in every event function full statements like: Forms!Module1.Controls!Name.Locked = False?
You can do what you want easier without using Eval() ...
Sub LockAssociateControl(fctName As String, pVal As Boolean)
Forms(getModuleName).Controls(fctName).Locked = pVal
End Sub
Note I changed the argument name from val to pVal to avoid confusing it with the Val() function.
I just finished reading The Little Book on Coffeescript, and I'm trying to get my head around the language. I'm trying to figure out how to do quite a plain vanilla bind. Here's my code:
times = (a = 1, b = 2) -> a*b
h = alert.bind times 8, 9
h
This doesn't produce any errors but it also doesn't run any alerts. What am I doing wrong?
You're not invoking the function h. You need to call h().
This code doesn't make sense. Line 2 transpiles to var h = alert.bind(times(8, 9)) meaning you are trying to create a version of alert where this is 72. ??? You can't do that.
Per 2, this throws an error, Uncaught TypeError: Illegal invocation.
A helpful tool for understanding coffeescript is JS2Coffee, which will translate code back and forth between Coffeescript and JavaScript. Then you can see whether what you've written is what you thought you wrote.
Your code here has two issues:
bind takes a context (which it will use as its this) as its first argument. Subsequent arguments will form the arguments list of the bound function when the new function is invoked.
Invoking a function that has no parameters requires parentheses in CS
I am attempting to use LuaJ with Scala. Most things work (actually all things work if you do them correctly!) but the simple task of setting object values has become incredibly complicated thanks to Scala's setter implementation.
Scala:
class TestObject {
var x: Int = 0
}
Lua:
function myTestFunction(testObject)
testObject.x = 3
end
If I execute the script or line containing this Lua function and pass a coerced instance of TestObject to myTestFunction this causes an error in LuaJ. LuaJ is trying to direct-write the value, and Scala requires you to go through the implicitly-defined setter (with the horrible name x_=, which is not valid Lua so even attempting to call that as a function makes your Lua not parse).
As I said, there are workarounds for this, such as defining your own setter or using the #BeanProperty markup. They just make code that should be easy to write much more complicated:
Lua:
function myTestFunction(testObject)
testObject.setX(testObject, 3)
end
Does anybody know of a way to get luaj to implicitly call the setter for such assignments? Or where I might look in the luaj source code to perhaps implement such a thing?
Thanks!
I must admit that I'm not too familiar with LuaJ, but the first thing that comes to my mind regarding your issue is to wrap the objects within proxy tables to ease interaction with the API. Depending upon what sort of needs you have, this solution may or may not be the best, but it could be a good temporary fix.
local mt = {}
function mt:__index(k)
return self.o[k] -- Define how your getters work here.
end
function mt:__newindex(k, v)
return self.o[k .. '_='](v) -- "object.k_=(v)"
end
local function proxy(o)
return setmetatable({o = o}, mt)
end
-- ...
function myTestFunction(testObject)
testObject = proxy(testObject)
testObject.x = 3
end
I believe this may be the least invasive way to solve your problem. As for modifying LuaJ's source code to better suit your needs, I had a quick look through the documentation and source code and found this, this, and this. My best guess says that line 71 of JavaInstance.java is where you'll find what you need to change, if Scala requires a different way of setting values.
f.set(m_instance, CoerceLuaToJava.coerce(value, f.getType()));
Perhaps you should use the method syntax:
testObject:setX(3)
Note the colon ':' instead of the dot '.' which can be hard to distinguish in some editors.
This has the same effect as the function call:
testObject.setX(testObject, 3)
but is more readable.
It can also be used to call static methods on classes:
luajava.bindClass("java.net.InetAddress"):getLocalHost():getHostName()
The part to the left of the ':' is evaluated once, so a statement such as
x = abc[d+e+f]:foo()
will be evaluated as if it were
local tmp = abc[d+e+f]
x = tmp.foo(tmp)