Writing a Lisp macro with nested quasiquoting - macros

I'm trying to write a Lisp macro that writes a bunch of macros, but I'm having problems generating macro code that uses the splice operator (in build-bind) that expands inside expressions first.
(defmacro define-term-construct (name filter-p list-keywords)
(let* ((do-list-name (output-symbol "do-~a-list" name))
(with-name (output-symbol "with-~a" name))
(do-filter-name (output-symbol "do-~as" name)))
`(progn
(defmacro ,do-list-name
(ls (&key ,#(append list-keywords '(id operation))) &body body)
(with-gensyms (el)
`(loop-list (,el ,ls :id ,id :operation ,operation)
(let (XXX,#(build-bind ,,name ,el))
(when (,',filter-p ,el)
(,',with-name ,el
,#body)))))))))
After the first pass I want to get:
(define-term-construct some some-p (args name))
->
(PROGN
(DEFMACRO DO-SOME-LIST (LS (&KEY ARGS NAME ID OPERATION) &BODY BODY)
(WITH-GENSYMS (EL)
`(LOOP-LIST (,EL ,LS :ID ,ID :OPERATION ,OPERATION)
(LET (,#(BUILD-BIND ,SOME ,EL))
(WHEN (SOME-P ,EL)
(WITH-SOME ,EL
,#BODY)))))))
Any idea what quote/quasiquotes should I use to get the desired code?

The output that you say that you want want to get has unbalanced commas. ,# already balances the backquote, so you cannot have ,SOME and ,EL. That's two levels of unquoting/splicing inside only one level of backquoting.
I suspect you want:
`(WITH-GENSYMS (EL) ... (LET (,#(BUILD-BIND 'SOME EL)) ...))
The some symbol comes in as an argument to the original macro and has to end up as a quoted symbol when passed to the build-bind function. The EL is evaluated straight. It's just a local variable introduced by the WITH-GENSYMS binding construct, and it is not in backquote context anymore because it is inside the splice.
Transliterating that back to the the original outer macro's backquote: SOME becomes ,name:
,#(build-bind ',name el) ;; two commas out balance two backquotes in
The symbol is spliced in under the umbrella of a protecting quote which will make sure it is treated as a symbol and not a variable.
The el does not need to be spliced in; it's not variable material but a hard-coded feature of the template being generated. If you were to put ,el it would look for an el variable in the define-term-construct macro's scope, where no such thing exists.

Related

Lisp string formatting with named parameters

Is there a way in Lisp to format a string using named parameters?
Perhaps something with association lists like
(format t "All for ~(who)a and ~(who)a for all!~%" ((who . "one")))
in order to print "All for one and one for all".
Similar to this python question, or this scala one, or even c++, but in Lisp.
If this functionality isn't in the language, does anyone have any cool functions or macros that could accomplish the same thing?
Use CL-INTERPOL.
(cl-interpol:enable-interpol-syntax)
String interpolation
For simple cases, you don't need FORMAT:
(lambda (who) #?"All for $(who) and $(who) for all!")
Then:
(funcall * "one")
=> "All for one and one for all!"
Interpret format directives
If you need to format, you can do:
(setf cl-interpol:*interpolate-format-directives* t)
For example, this expression:
(let ((who "one"))
(princ #?"All for ~A(who) and ~S(who) for all!~%"))
... prints:
All for one and "one" for all!
If you are curious, the above reads as:
(LET ((WHO "one"))
(PRINC
(WITH-OUTPUT-TO-STRING (#:G1177)
(WRITE-STRING "All for " #:G1177)
(FORMAT #:G1177 "~A" (PROGN WHO))
(WRITE-STRING " and " #:G1177)
(FORMAT #:G1177 "~S" (PROGN WHO))
(WRITE-STRING " for all!" #:G1177))))
Alternate reader function
Previously, I globally set *interpolate-format-directives*, which interprets format directive in all interpolated strings.
If you want to control precisely when format directives are interpolated, you can't just bind the variable temporarily in your code, because the magic happens at read-time. Instead, you have to use a custom reader function.
(set-dispatch-macro-character
#\#
#\F
(lambda (&rest args)
(let ((cl-interpol:*interpolate-format-directives* t))
(apply #'cl-interpol:interpol-reader args))))
If I reset the special variable to its default value NIL, then strings where directives are formatted are prefixed with #F, whereas normal interpolated ones use the #? syntax. If you want to change readtables, have a look at named readtables.

How do I write a macro that will repeat a command?

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))))

How to call a macro with a parameter instead of list in LISP?

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.

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.

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.