I'm reading some source codes of a project, which is a combination of c++ and lua, they are interwined through luabind.
There is a la.lua file, in which there is a function exec(arg). The lua file also uses functions/variables from other lua file, so it has statements as below in the beginning
module(..., package.seeall);
print("Loading "..debug.getinfo(1).source.."...")
require "client_config"
now I want to run la.exec() from interactive terminal(on linux), but I get errors like
attempt to index global 'lg' (a nil value)
if I want to import la.lua, I get
require "la"
Loading #./la.lua...
./la.lua:68: attempt to index global 'ld' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
./lg.lua:68: in main chunk
[C]: in function 'require'
stdin:1: in main chunk
[C]: ?
what can I do?
Well, what could be going wrong?
(Really general guesswork following, there's not much information in what you provided…)
One option is that you're missing dependencies because the files don't properly require all the things they depend on. (If A depends on & requires B and then C, and C depends on B but doesn't require it because it's implicitly loaded by A, directly loading C will fail.) So if you throw some hours at tracking down & fixing dependencies, things might suddenly work.
(However, depending on how the modules are written this may be impossible without a lot of restructuring. As an example, unless you set package.loaded["foo"] to foo's module table in foo before loading submdules, those submodules cannot require"foo". (Luckily, module does that, in newer code without module that's often forgotten – and then you'll get an endless loop (until the stack overflows) of foo loading other modules which load foo which loads other modules which …) Further, while "fixing" things so they load in the interpreter you might accidentally break the load order used by the program/library under normal operation which you won't notice until you try to run that one normally again. So it may simply cost too much time to fix dependencies. You might still be able to track down enough to construct a long lua -lfoo-lbar… one-off dependency list which might get things to run, but don't depend on it.)
Another option is that there are missing parts provided by C(++) modules. If these are written in the style of a Lua library (i.e. they have luaopen_FOO), they might load in the interpreter. (IIRC that's unlikely for C++ because it expects the main program to be C++-aware but lua is (usually? always?) plain C.) It's also possible that these modules don't work that way and need to be loaded in some other way. Yet another possibility might be that the main program pre-defines things in the Lua state(s) that it creates, which means that there is no module that you could load to get those things.
While there are some more variations on the above, these should be all of the general categories. If you suspect that your problem is the first one (merely missing dependency information), maybe throw some more time at this as you have a pretty good chance of getting it to work. If you suspect it's one of the latter two, there's a very high chance that you won't get it to work (at least not directly).
You might be able to side-step that problem by patching the program to open up a REPL and then do whatever it is you want to do from there. (The simplest way to do that is to call debug.debug(). It's really limited (no multiline, no implicit return, crappy error information), but if you need/want something better, something that behaves very much like the normal Lua REPL can be written in ~30 lines or so of Lua.)
Related
I have an nspire calculator and after writing a hash table implementation, found the BASIC environment to be a pretty offensive programming environment. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, it's impossible to use Lua to write libraries.
I did see that somewhere in the Lua interface you can detect variable changes so it might be possible within a file to use Lua functions, but I fear it will go out of scope if used externally.
Is there a better way to do this?
It's not impossible to write Lua libraries for a TI-Nspire. You can put the libraries code into a string, store it as a variable in TI-Basic and put the file in the MyLibs folder. Then, when you want to load your library, do loadstring(var.recall("libfilename/programstring"))(). This will load the library's code as a string from that files, compile it (using loadstring), and execute it (practicaly the same as require).
Also, about getting from controlling a Lua script using TI-Basic, depending on what you want to do, you could use math.eval("<some TI-Basic code>"). This will execute the code in TI-Basic, and return the result as a Lua value (or string). This way, you can call a TI-Basic function every once in a while, and act according to its output.
Trying to replicate this simple Lua example (using the improved code in the second post), I encountered the following strange issue:
I copied the code verbatim, but happened to call the first file "table.lua" (instead of "funcs.lua").
The second file was called "main.lua" as in the example.
In my case, whatever I tried, I invariably got the popular error message "attempt to call field 'myfunc' (a nil value)" (as if the require statement had been ignored; but path etc. were all in order).
After two hours of trying and hunting for info, I more or less on a hunch renamed the first file from "table.lua" to "tabble.lua", and then everything promptly worked as expected. Renaming to e.g. "tables.lua" will also work.
Being very new to Lua, I'd still like to understand what exactly went wrong. Initially I thought the reason might be that "table" is a reserved Lua word, but all references I checked do not list it as such.
So what is going on here?
I am using LuaForWindows v5.1.4-46 with the included SciTE editor/IDE (v.1.75).
Thanks for all hints.
The standard libraries math, io, string, …, and table are pre-defined (and pre-loaded) in the Lua interpreter. Because require caches modules by name, saying require "table" will return the standard table library instead of loading your own table module from a file.
A good way to solve the problem is to create a folder and put your library files in there. If the folder is called mylib, then require "mylib.table" will work and load the file.
Alternatively, if you just need to load the file once and do not need the features of require (searching the file in a number of directories, caching loaded libraries), you can use loadfile: Change require "table" to loadfile "./table.lua" () (where ./table.lua should be the full (relative is fine) path to the file.)
I'm trying to internationalize / translate a python app that is implemented as a wx.App(). I have things working for the most part -- I see translations in the right places. But there's a show-stopper bug: crashing at hard-to-predict times with errors like:
Traceback: ...
self.SetStatusText(_('text to be translated here'))
TypeError: 'numpy.ndarray' object is not callable
I suspect that one or more of the app's dependencies (there are quite a few) is clobbering the global translation function, _( ). One likely way would be doing so by using _ as the name of a dummy var when unpacking a tuple (which is fairly widespread practice). I made sure its not my app that is doing this, so I suspect its a dependency that is. Is there some way to "defend" against this, or otherwise deal with the issue?
I suspect this is a common situation, and so people have worked out how to handle it properly. Otherwise, I'll go with something like using a nonstandard name, such as _translate, instead of _. I think this would work, but be more verbose and a little harder to read., e.e.,
From the above I can not see what is going wrong.
Don't have issues with I18N in my wxPython application I do use matplotlib and numpy in it (not extensive).
Can you give the full traceback and/or a small runnable sample which shows the problem.
BTW, have you seen this page in the wxPython Phoenix doc which gives some other references at the end.
wxpython.org/Phoenix/docs/html/internationalization.html
Aha, if Translate works then you run into the issue of Python stealing "", you can workaround that by doing this:
Install a custom displayhook to keep Python from setting the global _ (underscore) to the value of the last evaluated expression. If we don't do this, our mapping of _ to gettext can get overwritten. This is useful/needed in interactive debugging with PyShell.
you do this by defining in your App module:
def _displayHook(obj):
"""Custom display hook to prevent Python stealing '_'."""
if obj is not None:
print repr(obj)
and then in your wx.App.OnInit method do:
# work around for Python stealing "_"
sys.displayhook = _displayHook
I find Erlang's module arity import /n where n is the number of arguments rather bizarre.
In Java and various other languages you can do something like:
import static com.stuff.Blah.myFunction;
Which will import all overloaded Blay.myFunction(..) regardless of parameters.
Besides I guess being explicit why did the language designers decide this was a good idea (I'm not trying to criticize the language... just curious)?
Does it have to do with code swapping?
Or does it have to do with hiding guard methods for recursion? If so why not allow arity on export but no need for arity on import?
Why would I want to be that explicit? That is import the two argument function but not the the three argument of myFunction?
You should be aware of what importing functions in Erlang really does. It is a pure textual transformation. If I do an -import(foo, [bar/1,baz/2]). it means that when I write a call like bar(5) or baz(a, 3) the compiler transforms these to foo:bar(5) and foo:baz(a, 3). That is all it does, nothing else. It doesn't check anything:
It doesn't check if the module foo contains the functions bar/1 or baz/2.
It doesn't even check if the module foo exists.
Really all it does is hide that you are calling a function in another module. That is why the recommendation from experienced Erlangers is "don't use it". It was a mistake. Unfortunately it is much easier to add stupid things than to get rid of them so we were never able to remove it.
"Does it have to do with code swapping?"
Yes, sort of. The unit of all code handling in Erlang is the module. So you compile modules, load modules, purge and delete modules. This means that there are no inter-module dependencies at all in the system and the compiler makes no assumptions about other modules when it is compiling a module. No assumptions are made that the environment in which a module is compiled will be the same in which it is run. That is why it is at runtime the system checks whether the function you are trying to call in another exists, or even if the module itself exists. That is why the import was a purely textual transformation.
Erlang was originally developed in Prolog.
In Prolog, the arity adds additional meaning to what you consider to be the 'arguments, as I understand from a function' in a procedural programming language. But that model does not apply here.
The so-called clauses 'married(X,Y).' and 'married(X,Y,Z).' imply a different kind of relationship 'married', which can be declared as married/2 and married/3.
In procedural programming, 'add(a,b)' or 'add(a,b,c)' are intended to generate the addition of a different number of arguments. That's not immediately the case in Prolog, where it is possible to have the relationship 'a and b, added' or 'a, b and c, added' mean something else. Needless to say, Prolog allows you to declare 'add' as you would expect a function would do. But it allows for more. More available meaning, means more need to control it.
And as in any module system, selecting what you want to expose to external clients makes sense: hence the declaration of arity.
Does it have to do with code swapping?
Kind of. The modules in Erlang are compiled separately (which is part of what allows code swapping), unlike Java classes, so the compiler doesn't know how many versions of the imported function with different arities exist. It could assume that all calls of a function with the given name come from the same module, of course, but the designers likely decided it wasn't particularly useful.
In fact, you rarely want to use imports at all, at least in my experience, just as you rarely use static imports in Java. Just write module:function, like Class.staticMethod.
Or does it have to do with hiding guard methods for recursion?
No, since not importing functions doesn't hide them in any way.
Is it possible to check if a lua script contains errors without executing it? I have fallowing code:
if(luaL_loadbuffer(L, data, size, name))
{
fprintf (stderr, "%s", lua_tostring (L, -1));
lua_pop (L, 1);
}
if(lua_pcall(L, 0, 0, 0))
{
fprintf (stderr, "%s", lua_tostring (L, -1));
lua_pop (L, 1);
}
But if the script contains errors it passes first if and it is executed. I want to know if it contains errors when I load it, not when I execute it. Is this possible?
You can use the LUA Compiler. It will only compile your file to bytecode without executing it.
Your program will also have the advantage the run faster if it is compiled.
You can even use the -p option to only perform a syntax checking, according to the linked man page :
-p load files but do not generate any output file. Used mainly for syntax checking or testing precompiled chunks: corrupted files will probably generate errors when loaded. For a thourough integrity test, use -t.
(This was originally meant as a reply to the first comment to Krtek's question, but I ran out of space there and to be honest it works as an answer just fine.)
Functions are essentially values, and thus a named function is actually a variable of that name. Variables, by their very definition, can change as a script is executed. Hell, someone might accidentally redefine one of those functions. Is that bad? To sum my thoughts up: depending on the script, parameters passed and/or actual implementations of those pre-defined functions you speak of (one might unset itself or others, for example), it is not possible to guarantee things work unless you are willing to narrow down some of your demands. Lua is too dynamic for what you are looking for. :)
If you want a flawless test: create a dummy environment with all bells and whistles in place, and see if it crashes anywhere along the way (loading, executing, etc). This is basically a sort of unit test, and as such would be pretty heavy.
If you want a basic check to see if a script has a valid syntax: Krtek gave an answer for that already. I am quite sure (but not 100%) that the lua equivalent is to loadfile or loadstring, and the respective C equivalent is to try and lua_load() the code, each of which convert readable script to bytecode which you would already need to do before you could actually execute the code in your normal all-is-well usecase. (And if that contained function definitions, those would need to be executed later on for the code inside those to execute.)
However, these are the extent of your options with regards to pre-empting errors before they actually happen. Lua is a very dynamic language, and what is a great strength also makes for a weakness when you want to prove correctness. There are simply too many variables involved for a perfect solution.
In general it is not possible, as Lua is a dynamic language, and most of errors happen in runtime.
If you want to check for syntax errors, use luac -p option. I use it as a part of my pre-commit hook, for example.
Other common errors are triggering by misusing the global variables. You may analyze output of luac -l to catch these cases. See here: http://lua-users.org/wiki/DetectingUndefinedVariables.
If you want something more advanced, there are several more-or-less functional static analysis tools for Lua code. Start with LuaInspect.
In any case, you are advised to write unit tests instead of just relying on static code checks. Less pain, more gain.