<< and >> symbols in Erlang - erlang

First of all, I'm an Erlang rookie here. I need to interface with a MySQL database and I found the erlang-mysql-driver. I'm trying that out, and am a little confused by some of the syntax.
I can get a row of data from the database with this (greatly oversimplified for brevity here):
Result = mysql:fetch(P1, ["SELECT column1, column2 FROM table1 WHERE column2='", Key, "'"]),
case Result of
{data, Data} ->
case mysql:get_result_rows(Data) of
[] -> not_found;
Res ->
%% Now 'Res' has the row
So now here is an example of what `Res' has:
[[<<"value from column1">>, <<"value from column2">>]]
I get that it's a list of records. In this case, the query returned 1 row of 2 columns.
My question is:
What do the << and >> symbols mean? And what is the best (Erlang-recommended) syntax for turning a list like this into a records which I have defined like:
-record(
my_record,
{
column1 = ""
,column2 = ""
}
).

Just a small note: the results are not bit string comprehensions per see, they are just bit strings. However you can use bit string comprehensions to produce a sequence of bit strings (which is described above with the generators and that), much like lists and lists comprehensions.
you can use erlang:binary_to_list/1 and erlang:list_to_binary/1 to convert between binary and strings (lists).
The reason the mysql driver returns bit strings is probably because they are much faster to manipulate.

In your specific example, you can do the conversion by matching on the returned column values, and then creating a new record like this:
case mysql:get_result_rows(Data) of
[] ->
not_found;
[[Col1, Col2]] ->
#my_record{column1 = Col1, column2 = Col2}
end

These are bit string comprehensions.
Bit string comprehensions are analogous to List Comprehensions. They are used to generate bit strings efficiently and succinctly.
Bit string comprehensions are written with the following syntax:
<< BitString || Qualifier1,...,QualifierN >>
BitString is a bit string expression, and each Qualifier is either a generator, a bit string generator or a filter.
• A generator is written as:
Pattern <- ListExpr.
ListExpr must be an expression which evaluates to a list of terms.
• A bit string generator is written as:
BitstringPattern <= BitStringExpr.
BitStringExpr must be an expression which evaluates to a bitstring.
• A filter is an expression which evaluates to true or false.
The variables in the generator patterns shadow variables in the function clause surrounding the bit string comprehensions.
A bit string comprehension returns a bit string, which is created by concatenating the results of evaluating BitString for each combination of bit string generator elements for which all filters are true.
Example:
1> << << (X*2) >> ||
<<X>> <= << 1,2,3 >> >>.
<<2,4,6>>

Related

What's the , Lua equivalent of pythons endswith()?

I want to convert this python code to lua .
for i in range(1000,9999):
if str(i).endswith('9'):
print(i)
I've come this far ,,
for var=1000,9000 then
if tostring(var).endswith('9') then
print (var)
end
end
but I don't know what's the lua equivalent of endswith() is ,,, im writing an nmap script,,
working 1st time with lua so pls let me know if there are any errors ,, on my current code .
The python code is not great, you can get the last digit by using modulo %
# python code using modulo
for i in range(1000,9999):
if i % 10 == 9:
print(i)
This also works in Lua. However Lua includes the last number in the loop, unlike python.
-- lua code to do this
for i=1000, 9998 do
if i % 10 == 9 then
print(i)
end
end
However in both languages you could iterate by 10 each time
for i in range(1009, 9999, 10):
print(i)
for i=9, 9998, 10 do
print(i)
for var = 1000, 9000 do
if string.sub(var, -1) == "9" then
-- do your stuff
end
end
XY-Problem
The X problem of how to best port your code to Lua has been answered by quantumpro already, who optimized it & cleaned it up.
I'll focus on your Y problem:
What's the Lua equivalent of Python endswith?
Calling string functions, OOP-style
In Lua, strings have a metatable that indexes the global string library table. String functions are called using str:func(...) in Lua rather than str.func(...) to pass the string str as first "self" argument (see "Difference between . and : in Lua").
Furthermore, if the argument to the call is a single string, you can omit the parentheses, turning str:func("...") into str:func"...".
Constant suffix: Pattern Matching
Lua provides a more powerful pattern matching function that can be used to check whether a string ends with a suffix: string.match. str.endswith("9") in Python is equivalent to str:match"9$" in Lua: $ anchors the pattern at the end of the string and 9 matches the literal character 9.
Be careful though: This approach doesn't work with arbitrary, possibly variable suffices since certain characters - such as $ - are magic characters in Lua patterns and thus have a special meaning. Consider str.endswith("."); this is not equivalent to string:match".$" in Lua, since . matches any character.
I'd say that this is the lua-esque way of checking whether a string ends with a constant suffix. Note that it does not return a boolean, but rather a match (the suffix, a truthy value) if successful or nil (a falsey value) if unsuccessful; it can thus safely be used in ifs. To convert the result into a boolean, you could use not not string:match"9$".
Variable suffix: Rolling your own
Lua's standard library is very minimalistic; as such, you often need to roll your own functions even for basic things. There are two possible implementations for endswith, one using pattern matching and another one using substrings; the latter approach is preferable because it's shorter, possibly faster (Lua uses a naive pattern matching engine) and doesn't have to take care of pattern escaping:
function string:endswith(suffix)
return self:sub(-#suffix) == suffix
end
Explanation: self:sub(-#suffix) returns the last suffix length characters of self, the first argument. This is compared against the suffix.
You can then call this function using the colon (:) syntax:
str = "prefixsuffix"
assert(str:endswith"suffix")
assert(not str:endswith"prefix")

Rails 5 scope like multiple partial strings

Say I have a scope like this:
scope :by_templates, ->(t) { joins(:template).where('templates.label ~* ?', t) }
How can I retrieve multiple templates with t like so?
Document.first.by_templates(%w[email facebook])
This code returns this error.
PG::DatatypeMismatch: ERROR: argument of AND must be type boolean, not type record
LINE 1: ...template_id" WHERE "documents"."user_id" = $1 AND (templates...
PostgreSQL allows you to apply a boolean valued operator to an entire array of values using the op any(array_expr) construct:
9.23.3. ANY/SOME (array)
expression operator ANY (array expression)
expression operator SOME (array expression)
The right-hand side is a parenthesized expression, which must yield an array value. The left-hand expression is evaluated and compared to each element of the array using the given operator, which must yield a Boolean result. The result of ANY is “true” if any true result is obtained. The result is “false” if no true result is found (including the case where the array has zero elements).
PostgreSQL also supports the array constructor syntax for creating arrays:
array[value, value, ...]
Conveniently, ActiveRecord will expand a placeholder as a comma-delimited list when the value is an array.
Putting these together gives us:
scope :by_templates, ->(templates) { joins(:template).where('templates.label ~* any(array[?])', templates) }
As an aside, if you're using the case-insensitive regex operator (~*) as a case-insensitive comparison (i.e. no real regex pattern matching going on) then you might want to use upper instead:
# Yes, this class method is still a scope.
def self.by_templates(templates)
joins(:template).where('upper(templates.label) = any(array[?])', templates.map(&:upcase) }
end
Then you could add an index to templates on upper(label) to speed things up and avoid possible issues with stray regex metacharacters in the templates. I tend to use upper case for this sort of thing because of oddities lie 'ß'.upcase being 'SS' but 'SS'.downcase being 'ss'.

Can I match against a string that contains non-ASCII characters?

I am writing an program in which I am dealing with strings in the form, e.g., of "\001SOURCE\001". That is, the strings contained alphanumeric text with an ASCII character of value 1 at each end. I am trying to write a function to match strings like these. I have tried a match like this:
handle(<<1,"SOURCE",1>>) -> ok.
But the match does not succeed. I have tried a few variations on this theme, but all have failed.
Is there a way to match a string that contains mostly alphanumeric text, with the exception of a non-alpha character at each end?
You can also do the following
[1] ++ "SOURCE" ++ [1] == "\001SOURCE\001".
Or convert to binary using list_to_binary and pattern match as
<<1,"SOURCE",1>> == <<"\001SOURCE\001">>.
Strings are syntactic sugar for lists. Lists are a type and binaries are a different type, so your match isn't working out because you're trying to match a list against a binary (same problem if you tried to match {1, "STRING", 1} to it, tuples aren't lists).
Remembering that strings are lists, we have a few options:
handle([1,83,84,82,73,78,71,1]) -> ok.
This will work just fine. Another, more readable (but uglier, sort of) way is to use character literals:
handle([1, $S,$T,$R,$I,$N,$G, 1]) -> ok.
Yet another way would be to strip the non-character values, and then pass that on to a handler:
handle(String) -> dispatch(string:strip(String, both, 1)).
dispatch("STRING") -> do_stuff();
dispatch("OTHER") -> do_other_stuff().
And, if at all possible, the best case is if you just stop using strings for text values entirely (if that's feasible) and process binaries directly instead. The syntax of binaries is much friendlier, they take up way fewer resources, and quite a few binary operations are significantly more efficient than their string/list counterparts. But that doesn't fit every case! (But its awesome when dealing with sockets...)

Erlang matchspecs with tuple comparison

I want to use erlang datetime values in the standard format {{Y,M,D},{H,Min,Sec}} in a MNESIA table for logging purposes and be able to select log entries by comparing with constant start and end time tuples.
It seems that the matchspec guard compiler somehow confuses tuple values with guard sub-expressions. Evaluating ets:match_spec_compile(MatchSpec) fails for
MatchSpec = [
{
{'_','$1','$2'}
,
[
{'==','$2',{1,2}}
]
,
['$_']
}
]
but succeeds when I compare $2 with any non-tuple value.
Is there a restriction that match guards cannot compare tuple values?
I believe the answer is to use double braces when using tuples (see Variables and Literals section of http://www.erlang.org/doc/apps/erts/match_spec.html#id69408). So to use a tuple in a matchspec expression, surround that tuple with braces, as in,
{'==','$2',{{1,2}}}
So, if I understand your example correctly, you would have
22> M=[{{'_','$1','$2'},[{'==','$2',{{1,2}}}],['$_']}].
[{{'_','$1','$2'},[{'==','$2',{{1,2}}}],['$_']}]
23> ets:match_spec_run([{1,1,{1,2}}],ets:match_spec_compile(M)).
[{1,1,{1,2}}]
24> ets:match_spec_run([{1,1,{2,2}}],ets:match_spec_compile(M)).
[]
EDIT: (sorry to edit your answer but this was the easiest way to get my comment in a readable form)
Yes, this is how it must be done. An easier way to get the match-spec is to use the (pseudo) function ets:fun2ms/1 which takes a literal fun as an argument and returns the match-spec. So
10> ets:fun2ms(fun ({A,B,C}=X) when C == {1,2} -> X end).
[{{'$1','$2','$3'},[{'==','$3',{{1,2}}}],['$_']}]
The shell recognises ets:fun2ms/1. For more information see ETS documentation. Mnesia uses the same match-specs as ETS.

Best way to count words in a string in Ruby?

Is there anything better than string.scan(/(\w|-)+/).size (the - is so, e.g., "one-way street" counts as 2 words instead of 3)?
string.split.size
Edited to explain multiple spaces
From the Ruby String Documentation page
split(pattern=$;, [limit]) → anArray
Divides str into substrings based on a delimiter, returning an array
of these substrings.
If pattern is a String, then its contents are used as the delimiter
when splitting str. If pattern is a single space, str is split on
whitespace, with leading whitespace and runs of contiguous whitespace
characters ignored.
If pattern is a Regexp, str is divided where the pattern matches.
Whenever the pattern matches a zero-length string, str is split into
individual characters. If pattern contains groups, the respective
matches will be returned in the array as well.
If pattern is omitted, the value of $; is used. If $; is nil (which is
the default), str is split on whitespace as if ' ' were specified.
If the limit parameter is omitted, trailing null fields are
suppressed. If limit is a positive number, at most that number of
fields will be returned (if limit is 1, the entire string is returned
as the only entry in an array). If negative, there is no limit to the
number of fields returned, and trailing null fields are not
suppressed.
" now's the time".split #=> ["now's", "the", "time"]
While that is the current version of ruby as of this edit, I learned on 1.7 (IIRC), where that also worked. I just tested it on 1.8.3.
I know this is an old question, but this might be useful to someone else looking for something more sophisticated than string.split. I wrote the words_counted gem to solve this particular problem, since defining words is pretty tricky.
The gem lets you define your own custom criteria, or use the out of the box regexp, which is pretty handy for most use cases. You can pre-filter words with a variety of options, including a string, lambda, array, or another regexp.
counter = WordsCounted::Counter.new("Hello, Renée! 123")
counter.word_count #=> 2
counter.words #=> ["Hello", "Renée"]
# filter the word "hello"
counter = WordsCounted::Counter.new("Hello, Renée!", reject: "Hello")
counter.word_count #=> 1
counter.words #=> ["Renée"]
# Count numbers only
counter = WordsCounted::Counter.new("Hello, Renée! 123", rexexp: /[0-9]/)
counter.word_count #=> 1
counter.words #=> ["123"]
The gem provides a bunch more useful methods.
If the 'word' in this case can be described as an alphanumeric sequence which can include '-' then the following solution may be appropriate (assuming that everything that doesn't match the 'word' pattern is a separator):
>> 'one-way street'.split(/[^-a-zA-Z]/).size
=> 2
>> 'one-way street'.split(/[^-a-zA-Z]/).each { |m| puts m }
one-way
street
=> ["one-way", "street"]
However, there are some other symbols that can be included in the regex - for example, ' to support the words like "it's".
This is pretty simplistic but does the job if you are typing words with spaces in between. It ends up counting numbers as well but I'm sure you could edit the code to not count numbers.
puts "enter a sentence to find its word length: "
word = gets
word = word.chomp
splits = word.split(" ")
target = splits.length.to_s
puts "your sentence is " + target + " words long"
The best way to do is to use split method.
split divides a string into sub-strings based on a delimiter, returning an array of the sub-strings.
split takes two parameters, namely; pattern and limit.
pattern is the delimiter over which the string is to be split into an array.
limit specifies the number of elements in the resulting array.
For more details, refer to Ruby Documentation: Ruby String documentation
str = "This is a string"
str.split(' ').size
#output: 4
The above code splits the string wherever it finds a space and hence it give the number of words in the string which is indirectly the size of the array.
The above solution is wrong, consider the following:
"one-way street"
You will get
["one-way","", "street"]
Use
'one-way street'.gsub(/[^-a-zA-Z]/, ' ').split.size
This splits words only on ASCII whitespace chars:
p " some word\nother\tword|word".strip.split(/\s+/).size #=> 4

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