It turns out that it is really hard to google the word comment.
Is is possible to represent "comment" expressions in quotations abstract syntax tree?
<# //this gets ignored by the compiler and don't inject the quotation
#>
If not, can you suggest a workaround to represent the comments?
As Ganesh points out, the Expr type has no way of representing comments - the F# quotations really represent just the AST of the expression, rather than full information about the source code (although you can get a file name & a location of a quoted expression).
To somehow embed comments in quotations, you'd need to come up with a way of embedding comments as valid F# code that means something - so you could e.g. define a dummy function comment and do something like this:
let comment (s:string) = ()
let sample =
<# comment "this is not ignored"
1 + ( comment "this is also not ignored"
4 ) #>
Then you could write an active pattern that looks for an expression of the form comment "..."; <expr> and extract the string and the following <expr>:
open Microsoft.FSharp.Quotations
let (|Comment|_|) = function
| Patterns.Sequential(DerivedPatterns.SpecificCall <## comment ##> (None, [], [Patterns.Value(comment, _)]), body) ->
Some(unbox<string> comment, body)
| _ -> None
Using the pattern, we can now write an (incomplete) pattern matching that succeeds when the top-level expression is some commented body expression:
match sample with
| Comment(comment, body) ->
printfn "// %s\n%A" comment body
This is not a very nice way of doing it, but I guess it is as good as it can get if you want to embed some annotations in a hand-written quotation code.
The Expr type that quotations return doesn't contain any way to represent a comment, so this is very unlikely to be possible.
Related
I'm taking a Haskell course at school, and I have to define a Logical Proposition datatype in Haskell. Everything so far Works fine (definition and functions), and i've declared it as an instance of Ord, Eq and show. The problem comes when I'm required to define a program which interacts with the user: I have to parse the input from the user into my datatype:
type Var = String
data FProp = V Var
| No FProp
| Y FProp FProp
| O FProp FProp
| Si FProp FProp
| Sii FProp FProp
where the formula: ¬q ^ p would be: (Y (No (V "q")) (V "p"))
I've been researching, and found that I can declare my datatype as an instance of Read.
Is this advisable? If it is, can I get some help in order to define the parsing method?
Not a complete answer, since this is a homework problem, but here are some hints.
The other answer suggested getLine followed by splitting at words. It sounds like you instead want something more like a conventional tokenizer, which would let you write things like:
(Y
(No (V q))
(V p))
Here’s one implementation that turns a string into tokens that are either a string of alphanumeric characters or a single, non-alphanumeric printable character. You would need to extend it to support quoted strings:
import Data.Char
type Token = String
tokenize :: String -> [Token]
{- Here, a token is either a string of alphanumeric characters, or else one
- non-spacing printable character, such as "(" or ")".
-}
tokenize [] = []
tokenize (x:xs) | isSpace x = tokenize xs
| not (isPrint x) = error $
"Invalid character " ++ show x ++ " in input."
| not (isAlphaNum x) = [x]:(tokenize xs)
| otherwise = let (token, rest) = span isAlphaNum (x:xs)
in token:(tokenize rest)
It turns the example into ["(","Y","(","No","(","V","q",")",")","(","V","p",")",")"]. Note that you have access to the entire repertoire of Unicode.
The main function that evaluates this interactively might look like:
main = interact ( unlines . map show . map evaluate . parse . tokenize )
Where parse turns a list of tokens into a list of ASTs and evaluate turns an AST into a printable expression.
As for implementing the parser, your language appears to have similar syntax to LISP, which is one of the simplest languages to parse; you don’t even need precedence rules. A recursive-descent parser could do it, and is probably the easiest to implement by hand. You can pattern-match on parse ("(":xs) =, but pattern-matching syntax can also implement lookahead very easily, for example parse ("(":x1:xs) = to look ahead one token.
If you’re calling the parser recursively, you would define a helper function that consumes only a single expression, and that has a type signature like :: [Token] -> (AST, [Token]). This lets you parse the inner expression, check that the next token is ")", and proceed with the parse. However, externally, you’ll want to consume all the tokens and return an AST or a list of them.
The stylish way to write a parser is with monadic parser combinators. (And maybe someone will post an example of one.) The industrial-strength solution would be a library like Parsec, but that’s probably overkill here. Still, parsing is (mostly!) a solved problem, and if you just want to get the assignment done on time, using a library off the shelf is a good idea.
the read part of a REPL interpreter typically looks like this
repl :: ForthState -> IO () -- parser definition
repl state
= do putStr "> " -- puts a > character to indicate it's waiting for input
input <- getLine -- this is what you're looking for, to read a line.
if input == "quit" -- allows user to quit the interpreter
then do putStrLn "Bye!"
return ()
else let (is, cs, d, output) = eval (words input) state -- your grammar definition is somewhere down the chain when eval is called on input
in do mapM_ putStrLn output
repl (is, cs, d, [])
main = do putStrLn "Welcome to your very own interpreter!"
repl initialForthState -- runs the parser, starting with read
your eval method will have various loops, stack manipulations, conditionals, etc to actually figure out what the user inputted. hope this helps you with at least the reading input part.
The precedence of F#'s member selection dot (.) operator as used in
System.Console.WriteLine("test")
has a lower precedence than [space] such that the following
ignore System.Console.WriteLine("test")
must be written explicitly as
ignore (System.Console.WriteLine("test"))
though this would be the intuition from the notion of juxtaposed symbols. Having used CoffeeScript, I can appreciate how intuitive precedence can serve to de-clutter code.
Are there any efforts being made to rationalize this kerfuffle, perhaps something along the lines that incorporated the "lightweight" syntax of the early years?
==============
Upon review, the culprit is not the "." operator but the invocation operator "()", as in "f()". So, given:
type C() = class end
then the following intuitive syntax fails:
printfn "%A" C() <-- syntax error FS0597
and must be written thus (as prescribed by the documentation):
printfn "%A" (C()) <-- OK
It seems intuitive that a string of symbols unbroken by white space should implicitly represents a block. In fact, the utility of juxtaposing is to create such a block.
a b.c is parsed as a (b.c), not (a b).c. So there are no efforts to rationalize this - it simply is not true.
Thanks to all those who responded.
My particular perplexity stemmed from treating () as an invocation operator. As an eager evaluation language, F# does not have or need such a thing. In stead, this is an expression boundary, as in, (expression). In particular, () bounds the nothing expression which is the only value of the type, unit. Consequently, () is the stipulation of a value and not a direction to resolved the associated function (though that is the practical consequence when parameters are provided to functions due to F#'s eager evaluation.)
As a result, the following expression
ignore System.Console.WriteLine("test")
actually surfaces three distinct values,
ignore System.Console.WriteLine ("test")
which are interpreted according to the left-to-right precedence evaluation order or F# (which then permits partial function application and perhaps other things)
( ignore System.Console.WriteLine ) ("test")
...but the result of (ignore expr) will be unit, which does not expect a parameter. Hence, syntax error (strong typing, yea!). So, an expression boundary is required. In particular,
ignore ( System.Console.WriteLine ("test") )
or
ignore (System.Console.WriteLine "test")
or
ignore <| System.Console.WriteLine "test"
or
System.Console.WriteLine "test" |> ignore
Sometimes in books I see this syntax for list and sequence comprehensions in F#:
seq { for i = 0 to System.Int32.MaxValue -> i }
This is from Programming F# by Chris Smith, page 80. In the F# which comes with VS2010, this doesn't compile. I believe -> has been deprecated. (See Alternative List Comprehension Syntax). However, -> can still be used in comprehensions which involve ranges:
seq { for c in 'A' .. 'Z' -> c }
According to Expert F# 2.0, page 58, this is because -> is shorthand for Seq.map over a range.
Why was the first usage of -> above deprecated?
The current use of -> seems inconsistent. Can anyone reconcile this for me?
The -> construct is supported only in the "simple" sequence expression syntax where you're doing a projection (Seq.map) over some data source using the following structure:
seq { for <binding> in <input> -> <projection> }
The first example you mentioned is using for .. to .. which is a different syntactical construct than for .. in, but you can rewrite it using the second one (In fact, I almost always use for .. in when writing sequence expressions):
seq { for i in 0 .. System.Int32.MaxValue -> i }
In all other forms of sequence expressions you'll have to use yield. In earlier versions of F#, the -> syntax was equivalent to yield (and there was also ->> which was equivalent to yield!). So for example, you was able to write:
seq { -> 10 // You need 'yield' here
->> [ 1; 2; 3 ] } // You need 'yield!' here
This syntax looks quite odd, so I think that the main reason for making these two deprecated is to keep the language consistent. The same computation expression syntax is used in sequence expressions (where -> makes some sense), but also for other computation types (and you can define your own), where yield feels more appropriate (and it also corresponds to return in asynchronous workflows or other computation expressions).
The "simple" sequence-specific syntax is still useful, because it saves you some typing (you replace do yield with just ->), but in more complicated cases, you don't save that many characters and I think that the syntax using -> & ->> can look a bit cryptic.
How can I write a no-op statement in F#?
Specifically, how can I improve the second clause of the following match statement:
match list with
| [] -> printfn "Empty!"
| _ -> ignore 0
Use unit for empty side effect:
match list with
| [] -> printfn "Empty!"
| _ -> ()
The answer from Stringer is, of course, correct. I thought it may be useful to clarify how this works, because "()" insn't really an empty statement or empty side effect...
In F#, every valid piece of code is an expression. Constructs like let and match consist of some keywords, patterns and several sub-expressions. The F# grammar for let and match looks like this:
<expr> ::= let <pattern> = <expr>
<expr>
::= match <expr> with
| <pat> -> <expr>
This means that the body of let or the body of clause of match must be some expression. It can be some function call such as ignore 0 or it can be some value - in your case it must be some expression of type unit, because printfn ".." is also of type unit.
The unit type is a type that has only one value, which is written as () (and it also means empty tuple with no elements). This is, indeed, somewhat similar to void in C# with the exception that void doesn't have any values.
BTW: The following code may look like a sequence of statements, but it is also an expression:
printf "Hello "
printf "world"
The F# compiler implicitly adds ; between the two lines and ; is a sequencing operator, which has the following structure: <expr>; <expr>. It requires that the first expression returns unit and returns the result of the second expression.
This is a bit surprising when you're coming from C# background, but it makes the langauge surprisingly elegant and consise. It doesn't limit you in any way - you can for example write:
if (a < 10 && (printfn "demo"; true)) then // ...
(This example isn't really useful - just a demonstration of the flexibility)
When quoting
<# 1 + 1 #>
I want "1 + 1"
instead of
"Call (None, Int32 op_Addition[Int32,Int32,Int32](Int32, Int32),
[Value (1), Value (1)])"
You'll have to write it yourself. See the F# quotations visualizer code as a guide for transforming the quotations abstract syntax tree.
I have implemented a quotation decompiler as part of a larger open source project Unquote. It can decompile many simple F# quoted expressions as single-line non-light syntax strings (see the project's home page for a list of decompiler features). For example,
> decompile <# (11 + 3) / 2 = String.length ("hello world".Substring(4, 5)) #>;;
val it : string =
"(11 + 3) / 2 = String.length ("hello world".Substring(4, 5))"
#Kurt Schelfthout is correct about the many challenges faced when decompiling F# Quotations into human readable form. But from my work so far, I believe that it is possible to write a quotation decompiler which can generate correct F# code. Take match expressions and computation expressions for example, the Unquote decompiler can produce correct F# code in the following simple cases:
> decompile <# match true with | true -> "hi" | _ -> "bye" #>;;
val it : string =
"let matchValue = true in if matchValue then "hi" else "bye""
> decompile <# seq {yield 1; yield 2} #>;;
val it : string =
"seq (Seq.delay (fun unitVar -> Seq.append (Seq.singleton 1) (Seq.delay (fun unitVar -> Seq.singleton 2))))"
Infix and prefix operators are not too hard (as you can see in the first example), but source structure such as new lines and indentation is an interesting topic (though not terribly difficult, I think). However, single-line non-light syntax is sufficient for Unquote's requirements.
There is none, and it's not quite that easy, except in very simple cases. One of the main problems, for example, is the match construct. It is syntactic sugar for a whole bunch of if and switch statements (try printing a quotation with a match in, you'll see). Another one of those biggies are computation expressions, but I guess you could skip those at first.
Then there is a the rabbit hole of ambiguities you'll have to resolve, with conventions like the pipe operator starts a new line, let starts a new line, indentation, infix, prefix, special cases like the (::) operator and so forth.
All in all, doable, but not trivial. Sort of like decompiling.