How do you accept a string in Erlang? - erlang

I'm writing a program where the user must enter a 'yes' or 'no' value. The following is the code that will be executed when the message {createPatient,PatientName} is received.
{createPatient, PatientName} ->
Pid = spawn(patient,newPatient,[PatientName]),
register(PatientName,Pid),
io:format("*--- New Patient with name - ~w~n", [PatientName]),
Result = io:read("Yes/No> "),
{_,Input} = Result,
if(Input==yes) ->
io:format("OK")
end,
loop(PatientRecords, DoctorPatientLinks, DoctorsOnline, CurrentPatientRequests, WaitingOfflineDoctorRequests);
When executed ,the line "New Patient with name..." is displayed however the line Yes/No is not displayed and the program sort of crashes because if another message is sent, then the execution of that message will not occur. Is there a different way to solve this problem please?

There are a number of points I would like to make here:
The io:read/1 function reads a term, not just a line, so you have to terminate input with a '.' (like in the shell).
io:read/1 returns {ok,Term} or {error,Reason} or eof so you code should check for these values, for example with a case.
As #AlexeyRomanov mentioned, io:get_line/1 might be a better choice for input.
The if expression must handle all cases even the ones in which you don't want to do anything, otherwise you will get an error. This can be combined with the case testing the read value.
You spawn the function patient:newPatient/1 before you ask if the name is a new patient, this seems a little strange. What does the newpatient function do? Is it in anyway also doing io to the user which might be interfering with functions here?
The main problem seems to be work out what is being done where, and when.

This is very artificial problem. In erlang any communication is usually inter-process and exchanging strings wouldn't make any sense - you ask question in context of process A and you would like to post answer in context of process B (shell probably).
Anyways, consider asking question and waiting in receive block in order to get an answer.
When question pops out in shell, call a function which will send the answer to 'asking' process with your answer.
So:
io:format("*--- New Patient with name - ~w~n", [PatientName]),
receive
{answer, yes} -> do_something();
{answer, no} -> do_something()
end
The 'answering' function would look like that:
answer(PatientName, Answer) ->
PatientName ! {answer, Answer}.
And shell action:
$> *--- New Patient with name - User1036032
$> somemodule:answer('User1036032', yes).
It is possible to create some dialog with shell (even unix shell), but to be honest it is used so rare that I do not remember those I/O tricks with read and write. http://trapexit.com/ used to have cookbook with this stuff.

Use io:get_line("Yes/No> ") instead.

Related

How to determine if sysdig field exists or handle error if it doesn't

I'm using Sysdig to capture some events and have a small chisel (LUA script) to capture and format the events as necessary. On the on_init() I'm requesting fields like so :
f_field = chisel.request_field("<field>")
My question is how can I check if a field exists before requesting it? I'm going to use a new field only just released on 0.24.1 but ideally I'd like my chisel to continue to work on older versions of sysdig without this field. I've tried wrapping the call to chisel.request_field in a pcall() like so :
ok, f_field = pcall(chisel.request_field("<field>"))
and even implementing my own "get_field" function :
function get_field(field)
ok, f = pcall(chisel.request_field(field))
if ok then return f else return nil end
end
f_field = get_field("<field>")
if f_field ~= nil then
-- do something
end
but the error ("chisel requesting nonexistent field <field>") persists.
I can't see a way to check if a field exists but I can't seem to handle the error either. I really don't want multiple versions of my scripts if possible.
Thanks
Steve H
You're almost there. Your issue is in how you're using pcall. Pcall takes a function value and any arguments you wish to call that function with. In your example you're passing the result of the request_field function call to pcall. Try this instead..
ok, f = pcall(chisel.request_field, "field")
pcall will call the chisel method with your args in a protected mode and catch any subsequent errors.

What do I need to add to use monadUserState with alex when parsing?

I am trying to write a program that will understand a language where embedded comments are allowed. Such as:
/* Here's a comment
/* This comment is further embedded */ second comment is closed
Must close first comment */
This should be recognized as a comment (and as such not stop at the first */ it sees unless it has only seen 1 comment opening prior).
This would be an easy issue to fix in C, I could simply have a counter that incremented when it saw comment opens and decrements when it sees a comment close. If the counter is at 0, we're in "code section".
However, without having state in Haskell, it's a little more challenging.
I've read up on monadUserState which supposedly allows to keep track of a state for this exact type of parsing. However, I can't find very much reading material on it aside from the tutorial page on alex.
When I try to compile it gives the error
templates\wrappers.hs:213:16: Not in scope: `alexEOF`
It should be noted that I directly changed from the "basic" wrapper to the "monadUserState" without changing my code (I don't know what to add in order to use it). It says that this must be initialized in the user code:
data AlexState = AlexState {
alex_pos :: !AlexPosn, -- position at current input location
alex_inp :: String, -- the current input
alex_chr :: !Char, -- the character before the input
alex_bytes :: [Byte], -- rest of the bytes for the current char
alex_scd :: !Int, -- the current startcode
alex_ust :: AlexUserState -- AlexUserState will be defined in the user program
}
I'm a bit of a lexxing noob and I'm not at all sure what I should be adding here to make it at least compile... then I can worry about the logic of the thing.
Update: Working example available here: http://lpaste.net/119212
The file "tiger.x" (link) in the alex github repo contains an example of how to track embedded comments using the monadUserState wrapper.
Well, unfortunately that example doesn't compile but the ideas there should work.
Basically, these lines perform embedded comment processing:
<0> "/*" { enterNewComment `andBegin` state_comment }
<state_comment> "/*" { embedComment }
<state_comment> "*/" { unembedComment }
<state_comment> . ;
<state_comment> \n { skip }
As for alexEOF, the idea is to add an EOF token to your token data type:
data Tokens = ... | EOF
and define alexEOF as:
alexEOF = return EOF
See the file tests/tokens_monadUserState_bytestring.x in the alex repo for an example of this.

emacs smart-tab with yasnippets

I'm trying to get tab complete within all open buffers and yasnippet to both work with the tab key. At the moment I can have one or the other. The following code is how I'm handling the yasnippet expand, but as I'm not a lisp programmer I cannot see the mistake here.
If it cannot expand the snippet I would like it to try and expand from the buffer.
;; Auto complete settings / tab settings
;; http://emacsblog.org/2007/03/12/tab-completion-everywhere/ <-- in the comments
(global-set-key [(tab)] 'smart-tab)
(defun smart-tab ()
"This smart tab is minibuffer compliant: it acts as usual in
the minibuffer. Else, if mark is active, indents region. Else if
point is at the end of a symbol, expands it. Else indents the
current line."
(interactive)
(if (minibufferp)
(unless (minibuffer-complete)
(dabbrev-expand nil))
(if mark-active
(indent-region (region-beginning)
(region-end))
(if (looking-at "\\_>")
(unless (yas/expand)
(dabbrev-expand nil))
(indent-for-tab-command)))))
First, I try to understand what the code does, and what you would like it does.
Your code
first checks if the point is in the minibuffer.
If so, then it tries to complete the minibuffer
if (in minibuffer) cannot complete it, it calls dabbrev-expand
else if the point is not in minibuffer
if some region is marked , it indents the region.
if no mark is active, it checks to see if the point is at the end of some word
if so, it checks is yasnippet can expand.
if yas cannot expand, it calls dabbrev-expand
if not, it tries to indent the current line
This is what your code does.
Your code fails due to yas/expand. This command does not return in case the expansion fails.
In case that this command fails, it checks the state of the variable yas/fallback-behavior. If this variable has the value call-other-command, as in your case, the failed yas expansion calls the command bound to the key kept in the variable yas/trigger-key.
In your case , this variable is TAB.
So: You are at the end of the word, You press TAB to complete it, this triggers the interactive smart-tab, which calls yas/expand which in case it fails to expand calls the bound function of TAB, and here is the infinite loop.
The Solution for your problem is to temporaily bound nil to yas/fallback-behavior in this smart-tab function.
Here is how to fix it:
(if (looking-at "\\_>")
(let ((yas/fallback-behavior nil))
(unless (yas/expand)
(dabbrev-expand nil)))
(indent-for-tab-command))

Control flow in Lua

I have a problem which i suppose must be very common and most of you would have faced it.
I have written a program in lua, say main.lua which on receiving key event should modify the coordinates and display the geometry figure.
This lua code calls reg.c, where it kind of registers.
Now in reg.c i have a function engine which receives the key pressed and passes it to the lua function responsible for key handling.
But by the time key event comes, lua code is done with the registration and exits, thus the call from engine() becomes illegal memory access leading to segmentation fault.
Also i suppose we can't have lua call hanging in reg function, and call engine function from somewhere else.
Then what should be the solution, please guide me through this.
#jacob: here is the prototype of what i am trying to achieve:
function key_handler() //this function will get the latest key pressed from some other function
{
draw.image();
draw.geometry();
...
...
while(1)
{
//draw Points until some condition goes wrong
}
}
Now, once entered into key_handler, while he is busy drawing the points unless and until the failing condition occurs, i am unable to receive key pressed till that time.
I hope this explanation is much simpler and have made my point, and will help others to understand the problem.
I am really sorry, but i am not good at expressing or making others understand.
One more thing, i ahve followed the C syntax to explain, however this is completely implemented in lua
Your code snippet is still largely non-informative (ideally one should be able to just run your code in a stock Lua interpreter and see your problem). If you're describing a Lua problem, use Lua code to describe it.
However I'm beginning to see where you want to go.
The thing you need to could do is have a coroutine that's called in your key handler, which passes an argument back to your handler:
function isContinue() --just to simulate whatever function you use getting keypresses.
-- in whatever framework you're using there will probably be a function key_pressed or the like.
print('Initialize checking function')
while true do
print('Continue looping?')
local ans = io.read():match('[yY]')
local action
if not ans then
print('Do what instead?')
action = io.read()
if action:match('kill') then -- abort keychecker.
break
end
end
coroutine.yield(ans,action)
end
print('finalizing isContinue')
return nil,'STOP' -- important to tell key_handler to quit too, else it'll be calling a dead coroutine.
end
function key_handler()
local coro = coroutine.create(isContinue)
local stat,cont,action
while true do
print'Draw point'
stat,cont,action = coroutine.resume(coro)
if not stat then
print('Coroutine errored:',cont)
elseif not cont then
print('isContinue interrupted keyhandler')
print("We'll "..action.." instead.")
break
end
end
print('finalizing key_handler')
end
key_handler()
-- type something containing y or Y to continue, all else aborts.
-- when aborting, you get asked what to do instead of continuing,
--- with "kill" being a special case.
This should be self explanatory. You should probably take a good look at Programming in Lua, chapter 9: Coroutines.
The big difficulty (well, if you're not accustomed to collaborative threading) is that a coroutine should yield itself: it's not the calling function that's in charge of returning control.
Hope this helps you.

What info is availble inside the pinfo parameter in a lua tshark listener?

So I'm looking at how listener taps work. What I've come up with at this point is:
my_tap = Listener.new(nil, "myfilter")
myvar = Field.new("something to look at")
-- then the callback
function my_tap.packet(pinfo)
-- format the time like os.date("%c", pinfo.abs_ts)
-- what else is in pinfo.???
-- lots of stuff
end
I have been unable to find any thorough documentation on what gets exposed to lua via the pinfo parameter to the packet callback. So far I have found *pinfo.abs_ts*. Which is great because tcp.options.timestamp.tsval seems to either be null or contain incorrect / incomplete information all the time.
What exactly gets exposed through pinfo? Is there a list of information I can pull somewhere other than pinfo.abs_ts?
wireshark.org/docs/wsug_html_chunked/lua_module_Pinfo.html seems to describe pretty much everything I was looking for

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