Re: WRT *BooleanArray
Leo~ On 2/20/06, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *) the resizable variant is heavily borked WRT allocation size fixes welcome *) I don't think that *BooleanArray should support: set P0[0], 3.2 set P0[1], foo set P0[2], P1 nor set N0, P[0] ... et al. I think, if you use a BooleanArray with compact storage you are knowing why and don't need automatic conversion to/from float, string, nor PMC. What do you think? I agree that you don't need string. PMC you probably want, since there are boolean PMCs and what not. Float I am not sure of. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: svn performance
Andy~ On 2/17/06, Andy Dougherty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 17 Feb 2006, Matt Fowles wrote: All~ On 2/17/06, jesse [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, Feb 17, 2006 at 08:38:26AM -0800, Robert Spier wrote: snapshots or releases. And, since a checkout takes about an hour (last time I checked) I tend to be too lazy to fetch one just to make a patch. Only if you're checking out to a Commodore 64. Or possibly hand-transcribing the bits. I could check it out over iridium dial up... Sigh. I wish it were that simple, or that funny. $ time wget http://cvs.perl.org/snapshots/parrot/parrot-latest.tar.gz real0m16.84s user0m0.09s sys 0m0.20s $ time svn co http://svn.perl.org/parrot/trunk parrot-trunk real 2:01:50.3 user 1:02.0 sys44.9 It's something specific to svn. No, I don't know what. $ svn --version svn, version 1.1.4 (r13838) compiled May 13 2005, 06:29:47 How bout you? Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2006-01-24 though 2006-02-07
parrot leads to problems with dynamic extensions. Nick Glencross tracked it down to a dependency issue with dynamic pmcs. http://xrl.us/jwtu Restricted clear_eh Recently Bob Rogers suggested restricting the scope of which exception handlers can be cleared by a clear_eh opcode. Leo implemented the request and applied Bob's tests. http://xrl.us/jwtv *_config.o Issues Florian Ragwitz posted a few options on how to clean up the *_config.o issues that seem to come up. Warnock applies (lightly as he posted on Monday). http://xrl.us/jwtw bc Needs Python Jerry Gay noticed that languages/bc would fail most of its tests without python. It should probably probe for that. http://xrl.us/jwtx GraphViz of Parrot Allison Randal posted a pdf of the parrot repository generated by GraphViz. It is pathological enough that acrobat does not really like the file. I am told that xpdf deals OK. http://xrl.us/jwty Tcl Globals Failure Will Coleda noticed that r11431 is suddenly failing a few Tcl tests. http://xrl.us/jwtz Param Count Checks Leo tried enabling param count checks to see what would fail. The answer appears to be much. This led to discussion of how to enable and disable checks on both arguments and returns. http://xrl.us/jwt2 Method Look up in Dynamic PMCs François Perrad wondered why his Lua PMCs were failing to find their new methods. Leo explained that the necessary methodhash in them was not yet implemented and gave him a workaround. http://xrl.us/jwt3 Perl 6 Language as if Jonathan Lang, Stevan Little, and Rob Kinyon has a discussion about some sort of type casting or coercion in Perl 6. The conversation sorted of petered out undecidedly. http://xrl.us/jwt4 ff operator Larry renamed the flip flop operator to ff . People rejoiced loudly. http://xrl.us/jwt5 New T-Shirt Juerd posted his one line perl 5 to perl 6 conversion T-Shirt to cafe press. I know at least one summarizer who would not object to having one show up at his door... http://xrl.us/jwt6 Protype Based MMD Stevan Little posted a link to a nifty paper on Prototype Based MMD. There is also a short version for the attention impaired. (I read that one; it is neat.) http://xrl.us/jwt7 S06 Questions Dakkar had a few questions about S06. Larry had a few answers. http://xrl.us/jwt8 Named Unicode Characters larry announced that one could put named Unicode code points into strings like this \c[LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A, COMBINING RING ABOVE]. http://xrl.us/jwt9 Perl 6 can goto hell; Larry announced the addition of a goto statement. http://xrl.us/jwua Something Between State and My Dave Whipp wondered if he could have a variable that was unique to each non-recursive invocation of a function. Luke Palmer suggested that env variables already did this, but Larry pointed out a few nuances there. http://xrl.us/jwub Universal Roles Yuval Kogman wants a really powerful sort of automatic application of roles, I think. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jwuc Macros Herbert Snorrason wants more specifics on macros in Perl 6. Larry gave him some. http://xrl.us/jwud Synopsis Typos Yiyi Hu and Andrew Savige found a few typos in a few synopses. Larry graciously fixed them. http://xrl.us/jwue Automatic Instantiation Darren Duncan wondered if Perl 6 had a way to provide a default value for uninstantiated variables of a particular type. The led to Larry going into a little more detail on protype objects, and Matt Fowles pushing for even more detail. http://xrl.us/jwuf Perl 6 Development Process Yuval Kogman posted a loose plan for for improving Perl 6's development momentum. This is a contentious issue, and I will not try to summarize it directly. Read the link, it is the last one of the summary. http://xrl.us/jwug The usual footer To post to any of these mailing lists please subscribe by sending email to [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], or [EMAIL PROTECTED]. If you find these summaries useful or enjoyable, please consider contributing to the Perl Foundation to help support the development of Perl. You might also like to send feedback to [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://donate.perl-foundation.org/ -- The Perl Foundation http://dev.perl.org/perl6/ -- Perl 6 Development site http://planet.parrotcode.org/ -- Parrot Blog aggregator
Perl 6 Summary for 2006-01-10 though 2006-01-24
Introspection Will Coleda wants an API for introspecting PMCs from PASM. http://xrl.us/jpxg FrOSCon Call For Papers Marcus Thiesen announced that the first Free and Open Source Conference is looking for papers in both English and German. http://xrl.us/jpxh YAML::Parser::Syck Bernhard Schmalhofer posted a brief look at what has already been done with adding support of libsyck and left the door open to anyone who wished to pick up the torch. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jpxi Parrot Link Issues Klaas-Jan Stol had problems linking parrot. Larry managed to track the problem down to an old libparrot in /usr/local/lib being picked up prematurely. http://xrl.us/jpxj Parrot_Context Unused Field Bob Rogers posted a patch which improved the name of an unused field in Parrot_Context. Leo applied the patch. Matt Fowles wondered why leave the unused pointer in at all. Leo explained that it was need for mark_register_stack to work out correctly, although another pointer could be moved over it to save those 4 bytes (or even 8 on 64 bit platforms!). http://xrl.us/jpxk gunie.g Question Chris Dolan was curious why print was an expression and not a statement in the punie grammar. Andrew Rodland explained that print was an expression because it return a value (success or failure). http://xrl.us/jpxm genrpt.pl is Obsolete Bernhard Schmalhofer noticed that tools/dev/genrpt.pl does the same thing as parrotbug and could thus be removed. Joshua Hoblitt agreed. http://xrl.us/jpxn Parrot::Config Contains Invalid Info Jerry Gay noticed that his Parrot::Config was being created with invalid data. Joshua Hoblitt offered to clean up one problem and asked for takers on another. http://xrl.us/jpxo Rename src/classes to src/pmc Bernhard Schmalhofer proposed and performed, after favorable reception of his proposal, a migration from directories name src/classes to src/pmc. http://xrl.us/jpxp Out of Date Comments Brad Bowman noticed some comments refering to cache.* in pobj.h. He provided a patch to remove them. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jpxq compute_dominance_frontiers Bug Bob Rogers found a problem in compute_dominance_frontiers . Curtis Rawls suggested simply disabling the function as it was merely a precursor to SSA which was never finished. http://xrl.us/jpxr Closure::mark Segfault Bob Rogers found a fixed a segfault in Closure::mark. Leo applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jpxs Parrot CPAN Bundle? Jerry Gay suggested making a CPAN Bundle (or possibly several) for Parrot. Chip liked the idea of having one bundle, and thought that having several sub-bundles would be more effort than it might be worth. http://xrl.us/jpxt Calling Conventions Details Leo had a few questions about pdd03 (calling conventions). Chip provided clarifications. http://xrl.us/jpxu PDD11 Bit Rot Brad Bowman noticed a bit of rot in pdd11 and polished it up. Jerry Gay applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jpxv Named Argument Passing Leo proposed a way of passing named arguments in PIR. Response was favorable, and he implemented it. http://xrl.us/jpxw -- proposal http://xrl.us/jpxx -- implementation LuaTables of Floats Klaas-Jan Stol wondered how to use N values as keys. Leo suggested using Float PMCs and Matt Fowles warned of the danger of using floating point values where equality checks might be needed. http://xrl.us/jpxy Argument Passing Bug Bob Rogers found an issue with the :optional to :slurpy state transition in process_args, so he fixed it. Leo applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jpxz Object Initialization Changes Bob Rogers noticed some changes the semantics of object initialization. He sent a patch with more tests, but Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jpx2 Assertion Failure in Life Tim Bunce found an assertion failure in ncurses_life.pir. Leo fixed the problem. http://xrl.us/jpx3 ncurses files Tim Bunce found several different ncurses files in runtime/parrot/library/ and asked which were generated from the others. Leo explained that ncurses.pasm was generated from ncurses.declarations, but that ncurses.pir was hand made. He suggested splitting them into to parts, one for libncurses and another for libform NCI functions. http://xrl.us/jpx4 Cygwin Build Failures Greg Bacon was having build troubles on Cygwin. After much work, still no resolution. http://xrl.us/jpx5 HP-UX Alignment Issues Nick Glencross found a failing assertion on HP-UX. Leo suggested disabling function pointer alignment on this system since it dist not appear to be working. http://xrl.us/jpx6 .const improvements François Perrad noticed that .const
Re: Q: Keys can be strings/ints only?
Klaas-Jan~ On 1/20/06, Klaas-Jan Stol [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I tried to index aggregates using several types of keys (that is, several types of values), and it seems only string and integer values can be used as keys. A quick look at the source in compilers/imcc/symreg.c confirms this, there is no case for 'N' values (and a test makes Parrot say build_key: unknown set). Will it be possible to use floating points as keys for arrays? It's up to the PMC to implement the indexing correctly, so support for this by IMCC should be no problem, I think. (I vaguely remember myself asking this sort of question before, quite some time ago, but I couldn't find it anywhere in the mail archives -- sorry about that) The reason for this question is LuaTable PMC, which can be used as both an array as well as a Hashtable. I'd like to implement proper Lua Table behaviour into the LuaTable PMC, but it should be able to cope with code like this: $P0 = new .LuaTable $P1 = new .LuaNumber $P1 = 42 $P0[1.234] = $P1 And this currently doesn't work, as mentioned above. (According to the PDD on keys, it should be possible to do this: op arg, P1[12.34] # Constant number key - handled as constant key I am not sure how wise an idea this is given the difficult of comparing floating point numbers for equality. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2006-01-02 though 2006-01-09
Perl 6 Summary for 2006-01-02 though 2006-01-09 All~ Welcome to another Perl 6 Summary. On a complete tangent, if you are playing World of Warcraft and see a troll hunter named Krynna, she rocks. She royally saved me. Be nice to her. Perl 6 Compiler PIL Containers and Roles Audrey explained that she and Stevan have been putting in effort to allow Pugs and PIL to bootstrap Roles and eventually the entire object model. http://xrl.us/jiza Reference and Assignment Semantics Audrey posted a brain dump focusing on the issues and implications of how containers, assignment, and auto dereferencing interact. http://xrl.us/jizb Table of Perl 6 Types Stevan Little posted a summary of his understanding of Perl 6's core type hierarchy. Larry replied with a few comments and corrections. http://xrl.us/jizc Parrot Configure and Symlinks Alberto Simoes wondered how the configuration system should handle symlinks. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jizd Removed NCI Types Dan Sugalski wondered why the T and L parameters have been removed from NCI and how he should work around their absence. Leo suggested you ManagedStruct PMCs for it and pointed him to the SDL libraries. http://xrl.us/jize mkdir test can fail Bob rogers posted a patch fixing an unanchored regular expression in the mkdir test. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jizf Build html should use Pod::Find Joshua Isom suggested that Pod::Find would make building html less error prone and more robust to changes the Pod structure. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jizg CWD on HP-UX Nick Glencross posted a fix to os.pmc for HP-UX. Alberto Simões applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jizh Alignment Issues on HP-UX Nick Glencross posted a back trace from a test failing on HP_UX. His initial analysis indicates that it is an alignment issue. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/jizi Tcl Todo Will Coleda posted more todos for Tcl. Like last week, I won't summarize them all. But I am very happy to see Tcl coming along again. I must say that I always like watching the test percentages climb. Parrot 0.4.1 Leo announced the release of Parrot 0.4.1. Sun's Compiler No Like CRLF Andy Dougherty noticed that Sun's compiler was choking on coroutine.pmc because it had bad line endings. He fixed it, and Jerry Gay applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jizj atan2 issues Joshua Hoblitt committed a possible fix for some atan2 issues occuring on openbsd, solaris, and cygwin. The fix didn't help cygwin or solaris. No word on openbsd. http://xrl.us/jizk OS.pmc needs a few methods Will Coleda created a few todo: OS.pmc needs an lstat method, and methods to set atime and mtime. http://xrl.us/jizm http://xrl.us/jizn Vanishing Warnings Will Coleda noticed that a few warnings disappeared. Leo admitted that he accidentally applied a fix some time ago. http://xrl.us/jizo Configure.pl and Optimize Andy Dougherty noticed that Configure.pl --optimize no longer worked correctly. Joshua Hoblitt took the opportunity to clean up that portion of Configure.pl. http://xrl.us/jizp Event System Question Klaas-Jan Stol wondered why events (unlike exceptions) are handled after a little time instead of immediately. Leo explained that this was due to the asynchronous nature of an events arrival and the inability to resume execution after a long jump. http://xrl.us/jizq CFLAGS missed two files Andy Dougherty noticed that the core_ops source files missed come of the directory rearrangements. Jerry Gay applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jizr File::Temp Issue Leo noticed an issue in t/run/options. Jerry tracked it down to an old version of Perl and the File::Temp module and fixed the problem. http://xrl.us/jizs Simple Namespace Question Joshua Isom wondered how to separate namespaces for find_global calls. Leo explain that he should use a list like ['Foo'; 'Bar']. http://xrl.us/jizt Credits The ever modest Nick Glencross updated his name in the credits file to be a little more understated. Oddly, no one applied the patch. http://xrl.us/jizu parrot config revisited Nick Glencross posted a few questions, thoughts, and patches involving parrot_get_config. Leo agreed with most of it, but had a few comments. http://xrl.us/jizv pkgsrc build Anders Nor Berle provided a few patches making thing work a little more smoothly with FreeBSD and pkgsrc. Jerry Gay reviewed the patches and Florian Ragwitz applied the relevant portions. In fact, 0.4.1 got added to pkgsrc for the curious. http://xrl.us/jizw http://xrl.us/jizx -- 0.4.1 added static and shared libparrot Florian Ragwitz provided a patch that fixed the
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-12-05 through 2005-12-12
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-12-05 through 2005-12-12 All~ Welcome to another Perl 6 summary. This week, like last, Parrot has produced the highest volume of emails. Fine by me, Parrot tends to be easiest to summarize. This summary is brought to you by Snow (the latest soft toy in the house). I would say you should get one, but apparently Borders stores everywhere are sold out of them. He is quite soft and a little mischievous. Maybe he belonged to a samurai once... Perl 6 Compiler Context Confusion Mike Li wondered how to make his sample code work in Perl 6. Jonathan Scott Duff pointed out that the part he was curious about, was correct already. Score one for Perl 6. http://xrl.us/i7ch Unbracketed Text from Text::bracketed Allison Randal wanted to be able to access the text within PGE::Text::bracketed's match object. Patrick made it work, and Allison happily used it. http://xrl.us/i7ci Security Model Bryan Burgers wondered how Parrot would support security. Luke Palmer pointed him to the p6i list and explained that Dan did have a plan for this that he couldn't recall. I recall something about VMS and having active and allowable capabilities. It sounded really cool when I read it. http://xrl.us/i7cj Parrot Build Failure David Dyck managed to make the build fail on his bizarre setup. Leo fixed it. http://xrl.us/i7ck src/revision.c Dependencies Leo discovered that src/revision.c is missing some dependencies. He would love it if someone fixed that. http://xrl.us/i7cm Documenting .lex Syntax Klaas-Jan Stol documented the new syntax for lexicals. Jerry Gay applied the patch. http://xrl.us/i7cn Multidimensional Arrays Roger Browne found that he could not make multidimensional array access work with PMCs. Leo said that should be filed as a TODO. http://xrl.us/i7co Directory Reorganization Jerry Gay has made good progress spearheading the directory reorganization of Parrot. Rather than give you a bunch of links to emails that are essentially the same, I will skip them, but thank you Jerry. make test Error on OS X Tiger Jason Gessner reported a test failure on OS X Tiger. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/i7cp C3 MRO Test C3 MRO (C3 P0's younger brother) recently underwent his factory acceptance test and will be released into the world. Like his older brother, he also speaks fluent Tibetan. On an unrelated note, Stevan Little added some test for the C3 method resolution order used in Parrot. http://xrl.us/i7cq Global Store Hash Klaas-Jan Stol wanted to access the global store hash directly. Leo showed him how. http://xrl.us/i7cr Release Goals Leo kicked off a brain storming session for what to focus on for the next release. Brains promptly began storming. http://xrl.us/i7cs Sun4 JIT Fix Andy Dougherty submitted a big fix to make Sun4's JIT link again. Leo applied the patch. http://xrl.us/i7ct :flat and :slurpy issues Bob Rogers was having trouble making Parrot eat linguine because it would not mix :flat and :slurpy arguments. He also found that the problem was do to premature optimization (actually a PREMATURE_OPTIMIZATION define) and submitted a fix and test. Leo thanked him and applied them. http://xrl.us/i7cu Parrot 0.4.0 Luthor Leo announced the latest release of Parrot 0.4.0 aka Luthor. There was much rejoicing, but I was left wondering where Leo comes up with these release names. http://xrl.us/i7cv loadlib Cleanup Leo has been hunting some uninitialized memory bugs in Parrot's library loading code. He has been having a difficult time finding the problem, and thus is looking into a general code clean up to make the problem easier to find (or possibly just fix it). Jerry Gay said he would make it work on windows, but no one volunteered for the main portion of the work. http://xrl.us/i7cw languages/regex/Makefile is not Generated Jerry Gay noticed that languages/regex/Makefile really ought to be a generated file. He opened a TODO for it. http://xrl.us/i7cx Fix Parrot IO Test 23 chromatic the ever uncapitalized proferred a patch for a failing Parrot_IO test. He seemed to feel that someone else ought to review it as he was not 100% on it. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/i7cy load_bytecode Fails Outside of Parrot Bob Rogers noticed that load bytecode didn't work when not in the Parrot directory. Leo mistakenly fixed a different problem before he fixed this one. Sounds like a win/win to me. http://xrl.us/i7cz Tcl Win32 Trouble Jerry Gay noticed a problem building Tcl on Win32. François Perrad pointed out an old patch from Nick Glencross which apparently solves the problem. Warnock
Re: Namespaces (At Long Last)
Leo~ On 12/4/05, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Dec 4, 2005, at 5:57, Matt Diephouse wrote: Roger Browne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leopold Toetsch wrote: add_sub($S0, $P0) add_namespace($S0, $P0) add_var($S0, $P0) Which HLLs would use these interfaces? Maybe I'm missing the point, but I see these being used in the implementation of import_into as a way for the source HLL to tell the target HLL whether to treat each name as a sub, namespace, variable or method. Yes, that's correct. And it doesn't answer my question at all, sorry. Which HLLs are able to divide their symbols into above categories? Further: as this proposals deals with the managment of namespaces, a special typed interface for a 'namespace' symbol name seems not to be necessary, because if it weren't evident, where a namespace is used, we couldn't deal with namespaces at all. The current implementation disambiguates namespace names from symbol names by prepending a '\0' char to the former. Therefore it's always clear if a namespace or a 'variable' symbol is used. Remaining for me is the distiction between a variable and a function symbol: - python: no (all names are just names) - tcl: afaik no (all names are strings) - perl5: sometimes (via sigil, but $ref_tosub) - perl6: maybe (sigil is part of the symbol name, but $ref) - ??? LISP - yes Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: This week's summary
Piers~ On 11/30/05, The Perl 6 Summarizer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So, I hopped into a taxi (and I use the word hopped advisedly) and repaired straightway to King's Cross and thence home to Gateshead, where my discomfort was somewhat ameliorated by the distraction of preparing this week's summary. I hope to be writing next week's summary as well because the week after I'll be moving house and don't quite know when I'll have my bandwidth back. That sounds fine to me. After next weeks I will start writing weekly summaries until you send me an email saying you are ready to resume. Don't hurry on my account; I know moving is a pain. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: Solving '=' confusion: ':=' for aliasing
Chip~ On 11/29/05, Chip Salzenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Consider: P0 = P1 P0 = S1 P0 = I1 P0 = N1 o/~ One of these things is not like the others One of these things just doesn't belong o/~ And if I have to read: P0 = new .Integer P0 = 1 one more time... *sigh* Therefore, I propose requiring people to spell aliasing as ':='. This will affect all code generated to use P and S registers. It should be an easy fix (albeit an extensive one). And if we don't do it now, it'll just get harder. So here's the lowdown: P0 := P1 # aliasing: P0 and P1 point to same PMC P0 := opcode # aliasing: P0 points to PMC returned by opcode P0 = ... # assignment: modifies P0, NO MATTER WHAT '...' IS S0 := S1 # aliasing: S0 and S1 point to same header S0 := opcode # aliasing: S0 points to header returned by opcode S0 = ... # assignment: modifies S0, NO MATTER WHAT '...' IS I0 := ... # ILLEGAL I0 = ... # assignment: modifies I0 N0 := ... # ILLEGAL N0 = ... # assignment: modifies N0 Comments? Fresh or rotten vegetables? I very much like it. I think I may have suggested something like it earlier (although I might have only thought it). But, I am very much in favor of not confusing the two sets of semantics. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-11-14 through 2005-11-21
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-11-14 through 2005-11-21 All~ Welcome to another Perl 6 Summary. The attentive among you may notice that this one is on time. I am not sure how that happened, but we will try and keep it up. On a complete side note, I think there should be a Perl guild of some sort on World of Warcraft. It should probably be horde if there is, both because I hate the alliance and because it fits better. Perl 6 Language As usual for Pugs, most development continued off list. http://xrl.us/iipt Too Lazy? Luke Palmer posted a problem he was having with pugs. Warnock applies (which likely means it was made into a test and fixed). http://xrl.us/iipu Assigning to Named Subrules Jerry Gay had a question about the semantics of assigning to named subrules in PGE. Patrick explained that it created an array of capture objects. http://xrl.us/iipv Keyed Access to Match Objects Jerry Gay was having trouble with keyed access to match objects. After some discussion he implemented the keyed routine he needed and threatened to implement a few more. http://xrl.us/iipw PGE Now compreg s Patrick announced that PGE was now a better citizen in the parrot world, using compreg to locate the compiler instead of find_global. http://xrl.us/iipx Parrot I am going to get an English muffin. More in a moment... much better. Peanut butter is a wonderful thing. Where was I? Character Classes Done Jerry Gay wondered if the TODO about strings and character classes was still open. Patrick said it was resolved and should be closed. http://xrl.us/iipy rx_grammar.pl Progress? Jerry Gay wondered if rx_grammar.pl had seen any work lately. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/iipz N Registers No Longer Get Whacked Leo, thanks to his new calling scheme, closed an RT ticket from Dec 2004. http://xrl.us/iip2 Report SVN Revision in parrotbug? Jerry Gay resurrected an old ticket wondering whether to add a revision field to RT tickets. http://xrl.us/iip3 Making Parrot Potable Florian Ragwitz was having trouble drinking Parrot so he wants to expend some effort to make it more potable. Apparently it does not get drunk so well by many machines in debian's build farms and he would like to fix it. When he asked how best to do his work (so as not to upset to many), Chip suggested a local SVK mirror. Hopefully after he is done even more people will be able to enjoy drinking the Parrot kool-aid. http://xrl.us/iip4 pbc_merge Requires LINK_DYNAMIC Nick Glencross provided a patch fixing pbc_merge on HP-UX. François Perrad noted that it was also problem on Win32. Jonathan Worthington explained that he was aware of the problem and that the dependency on the dynamic libraries would soon be removed. http://xrl.us/iip5 Compilable Option Will Coleda wants a -c option which will only tell you if the code is compilable for Parrot. http://xrl.us/iip6 Clerihewsiwhatsit? Inspired by Piers's inspiration from his name, Roger Browne wrote a Clerihew. Piers and Roger scare me. http://xrl.us/iip7 Debug Segments There was much discussion about what sort of interface to expose to HLL for debug segments. It looks like something good will come out of it all. http://xrl.us/iip8 Amber for Parrot version 0.3.1 Announced, Roger Browne displaying Amber 0.3.1 aroun': this latest version, magic cookie, is more than just a rookie. http://xrl.us/iip9 t/library/streams.t Failing Patrick is still having trouble with t/library/streams.t. It sounds like he would appreciate help, but Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/iiqa PGE::glob Issues Will Coleda spotted a problem with PGE::Glob. Patrick fixed it. http://xrl.us/iiqb find_word_boundary Unneeded Patrick posted his explanation of why find_word_boundary was an unneeded opcode. Too that end he posted a patch updating t/op/string_cs.t. Warnock applies to both thoughts. http://xrl.us/iiqc http://xrl.us/iiqd Coroutines Trample Scratchpads Nick Glencross noted that coroutine_3.pasm was trampling some memory. Leo said that scratchpads were on their way out. Nick wondered if the ticket should be closed now, or when this is fixed. I vote that we not close tickets until the problem is gone, but Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/iiqe MD5 Broken Chip noticed that MD5 was horribly broken recently. He decided that parrot should avoid it in favor of the SHA-2 family and maybe Whirlpool. If you are a crypto dork, you have your job cut out for you. http://xrl.us/iiqf Joshua Hoblitt joyously closed an RT ticket about removing $(MAKE_C). http://xrl.us/iiqg inconsistent dll linkage Jerry Gay announce that the last MSVC 7.1
Re: website (again)
Will~ On 11/9/05, Will Coleda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Updated the Where we are section. From this section: check out This week on Perl 6 by Matt Fowles, that should also say and Piers Cawley. Thanks for keeping the website pretty, it is our public face. Matt
Re: [perl #37577] [PATCH] Fix a couple of minor niggles (-1 - uint, KR prototype)
All~ On 11/6/05, Joshua Juran [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 5, 2005, at 4:27 PM, Joshua Hoblitt via RT wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Tue Nov 01 04:52:22 2005]: This patch fixes two classes of issue. * Don't assign -1 to an unsigned variable; use ~0U instead as it makes it clear that the value is intended to be out-of-band (g++ warned about this, and C compilers will increasingly) * Change a KR prototype in a config test Regards, Nick I've applied the bit of the patch that removed the KRism in config/auto/alignptrs/test_c.in as r9803. I don't think that anybody, myself included, like the idea of using ~0U as a magic value. Can I consider this bug 'resolved'? Cheers, -J If -1 causes warnings, I'd think it should be replaced. I agree that ~0U isn't readable. How about defining a named constant? That solves both problems, and has the additional benefit of making the client code self-documenting. Another option is to explicitly cast it as follows: uint foo = (uint)(-1); The last set of parens is unecessary, but I like them. This also makes it fairly clear that you are doing something odd. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: Compiling parrot with c++
Nick~ On 10/26/05, Nick Glencross [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Guy, As a follow-up to a discussion a few days ago about binding parrot to C++ functions, is making it possible to compile parrot with a C++ compiler a 'Bad Thing'? I like the idea, but I tend to like C++ more than reason would dictate. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-10-10 through 2005-10-24
=head1 Perl 6 Summary for 2005-10-10 through 2005-10-18 All~ Welcome to another Perl 6 Summary. Sadly, this week's summary is not brought to you by cookies as I already finished them. Sadder still, it is also brought to you a week late. On the plus side, Mike Doughty's Haughty Melodic is quite good. =head2 Perl 6 Compilers This was a shockingly high volume fortnight for p6c with 5 different threads on it! =head3 Feather: A Retrospective Juerd thought that now would be a good time to evaluate the usefulness of feather to the community. Warnock applies, but he probably found answers off list... http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.compiler/browse_frm/thread/f14d8337b681d4a9/c95fc3fdf6d46f5b#c95fc3fdf6d46f5b Google Groups : perl.perl6.compiler =head3 PGE Better, Stronger, Faster Patrick announced significant internal updates to PGE. It looks like things are coming along very nicely. Yay, Patrick! http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.compiler/browse_frm/thread/10bff9a3100902a5/7135f5627205f9ca#7135f5627205f9ca Google Groups : perl.perl6.compiler =head3 PGE Now With Better Balance Patrick also announced the subrule CPGE::Text::bracketed which is similar to CText::Balanced from Perl 5. Now where, did I put my darn push-down automata. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.compiler/browse_frm/thread/b52eb566b1b74920/19e4709aa8d2ecd6#19e4709aa8d2ecd6 Google Groups : perl.perl6.compiler =head3 Object Space Thoughts Stevan Little posted some of his thoughts about how the meta-model can be built up from run time primitives. It is pretty neat. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.compiler/browse_frm/thread/e97984486b61828b/f34b165f8a919dcf#f34b165f8a919dcf Google Groups : perl.perl6.compiler =head3 Parrot PMCs within Pugs Christian Renz wondered how to get at Parrot's PMCs from Pugs. Autrijus admitted that that feature was not currently available, but offered a commit bit and suggested that adding tests would be a good start. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.compiler/browse_frm/thread/2f09e7c0503ea02f/d200cbd33f975d1d#d200cbd33f975d1d Google Groups : perl.perl6.compiler =head2 Parrot =head3 README.win32 Michael Cartmel fixed a few spelling errors in README.win32. Joshua Hoblitt applied the patch. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/38ef8ca32b5fab74/f5fdce20a19d50a9#f5fdce20a19d50a9 Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 parrot-config.imc Documentation Roger Browne offered a patch fixing documentation in parrot-config.imc. Warnock applies. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/2d86e5015608cb9e/43969cc2f25a0f7b#43969cc2f25a0f7b Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 Train Parrot to Flex In the RT clean up, an old ticket has resurfaced. Parrot needs to be updated to use flex 2.5.31, which is incompatible with 2.5.4. Patches welcome. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/8dc8adf441fa6805/f24be3c94a3dfba7#f24be3c94a3dfba7 Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 Dynamism Defeats Static Analysis Patrick and I had a brief back and forth about detecting PGE recursion. The short answer is that it is possible in the static case, but not in the face of changing rules. Stupid halting problem, where did I put my PDA. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/b08ed4ac97e3090c/d934e5866bdc9a43#d934e5866bdc9a43 Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 void function return Will Coleda is tired of special casing void functions and wants C() = function() to be legal in PIR. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/c7e54dc1d2b887a9/74dcbe2b279de204#74dcbe2b279de204 Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 Bison = 1.75c Joshua Hoblitt noticed that the newer Bisons have slightly different error messages than older ones. He felt that we should either standardize on the newer bison or explicitly declare error messages. No official ruling on which... http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/79e9151802ec9185/c9d1a7dd3236d16b#c9d1a7dd3236d16b Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 __set_pmc_keyed_* Patrick needed a way to distinguish C__set_pmc_keyed_int from C__set_pmc_keyed. Leo gave it to him. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/e8f0cf140b05669a/9a125b4a7524b9f2#9a125b4a7524b9f2 Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 HLL type mappings Roger Browne wondered how he could set HLL type mappings from PIR. Leo said it was not yet implemented or speced. Roger suggested adding a few opcodes. http://groups.google.com/group/perl.perl6.internals/browse_frm/thread/5f6e488e14b5b859/39be8e39b16b9d71#39be8e39b16b9d71 Google Groups : perl.perl6.internals =head3 s/\@(directive)/:$1/g Jonathan Scott Duff submitted a patch which swapped @directives to :directives everywhere. Leo applied most of it in several smaller
Re: [perl #36452] Re: [BUG] PGE recursion, bus error
Patrick~ On 10/9/05, Patrick R. Michaud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 09, 2005 at 09:55:44AM -1000, Joshua Hoblitt wrote: What is the status of this bug? Should this be a PGE todo item? My opinion is that it's not a bug -- the normal behavior for most programs with infinite recursive loops is that they eventually explode. Sounds reasonable. I'm sure it would be nearly impossible to catch all possible cases of infinite recursion when the grammar is compiled but how difficult would it be to trap at runtime? A simple warning along the lines of Warning: production foo has recursed 10,000 times without matching any terminal\n would certainly be useful in figuring why it blew up... We can enter trap recursions without terminals as a possible PGE todo item, but unless someone knows an easy implementation or wants to take on the task of implementation it's not likely to be resolved anytime soon. :-) The theoretical implementation of this is quite simple. Keep a counter. everytime a token is consumed from the input stream reset it. Every time a rule is followed increment the counter. If the counter is ever greater than the number of productions in the grammer, then you have gone into infinite recursion. The only place where this technique will fail is where a rule that it is attempting to match changes dynamically (i.e. mid match). In such an event you have to consider the number of productions infinite. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: [perl #36452] Re: [BUG] PGE recursion, bus error
Patrick~
On 10/10/05, Patrick R. Michaud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 09:11:02AM -0400, Matt Fowles wrote:
Patrick~
The theoretical implementation of this is quite simple. Keep a
counter. everytime a token is consumed from the input stream reset it.
Every time a rule is followed increment the counter. If the counter
is ever greater than the number of productions in the grammer, then
you have gone into infinite recursion.
What happens with something like:
rule atom { A }
rule binary { . atom | expr \* atom }
rule expr { binary }
AB ~~ / expr /
Here, the '.' in binary keeps consuming the initial A (thus
resetting the counter), but the atom rule fails, so we take
the alternation which recurses back to expr and does the whole
thing all over again (with the counter having been reset to zero).
So I guess we'd need to backtrack the counter as well...?
Perhaps what we want to be watching is positions, so that we detect
when the depth of nested subrules activated from a common input position
is greater than the total number of defined rules?
And, of course, in the case of rules containing closures, all bets
should be off for detecting infinite recursion, since the closure
could be handling the termination of the recursion based on some
criteria other than tokens consumed from the input stream. (But it's
also probably easy to know when we've executed a closure and thus
disable the check for infinite recursion when that happens.)
You are right about backtracking, rather than a simple counter we need
to keep track of the current recursion depth from a particular
position. I agree that we would have to disable this for rules
containing code. Perhaps a better approach would be to perform a bit
of static analysis on the grammar and look for left recursions at
creation time (I believe that is a known problem). Then we can just
warn once up front and go on our merry way recursing at matchtime.
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: [perl #36452] Re: [BUG] PGE recursion, bus error
Patrick~ On 10/10/05, Patrick R. Michaud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 10:45:54AM -0400, Matt Fowles wrote: Perhaps a better approach would be to perform a bit of static analysis on the grammar and look for left recursions at creation time (I believe that is a known problem). Then we can just warn once up front and go on our merry way recursing at matchtime. I think this approach falls back into my category of unless someone wants to take on the task of implementation it's not likely to be resolved anytime soon... :-) :-) In a dynamic environment like the one we have (parrot/perl) I find it's really hard to say what constitutes creation time, especially since we can refer to subrules dynamically ( $foo, ::$foo, etc. ) and our grammars have inheritance in which a rule defined by a parent grammar can invoke a rule defined later in a child grammar. As with closures, we could probably punt on performing any analysis of rules with dynamic references or that refer to rules outside of the current grammar. But given that we can't really know until matchtime what subrule will be invoked by an expression like binary, it's hard for me to imagine a whole lot we can do in the way of static analysis beforehand. However, that could easily just be a limit of my imagination. I completely forgot about inheritance. That basically throws static analysis out the window. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: [perl #31285] [PATCH] first step in implementing a SCons base build
Joshua~ On 10/9/05, Joshua Hoblitt via RT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Mon Oct 03 12:49:55 2005]: I brought it up on the list first, and Dan was OK with it because scons can output a series of commands (like a bat file or batch script) to build from scratch (no smart dependency checks). This also provides a way to break the make dependency. All that having been said, I probably won't get around to finishing this anytime soon, and I don't think most of the others are interested in it. Although it also would solve the problem of our make system being broken WRT dependency checking. Matt, Is it OK consider this patch withdrawn (at least for the time being) and close the bug? Yeah, that is fine. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-09-26 through 2005-10-02
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-09-26 through 2005-10-02 All~ Welcome to another summary, this time a day late because I was in Philly for Serenity. If you haven't seen Serenity yet you should stop reading this summary and go see it. The summary will be here when you get back. I promise. Perl 6 Compiler No postings this week. I blame Piers for scaring them off last week. Parrot Summary Links Last weeks load lib thread morphed into a conversation about the life span of the shortened links that appear in summaries. Piers pointed out that, although the short links expire, the long links are archived at perl.org. http://xrl.us/hvbn RT Cleanup Joshua Hoblitt has been continuing his massive clean up of RT. It makes me glad of two things: that someone is doing it and that I am not doing it. I won't post all of the links for these messages, but much work is getting done. debug segments Jonathan Worthington posted an RFC of his design for debug and source segments in Parrot's packfiles. People seem to like it generally. Hopefully the design will be implemented soon. http://xrl.us/hvbo Leo's Context Branch Hits the Mainline After a few more reviews from Chip, Leo's context branch has been dubbed ready and has been moved to the mainline. This marks the culmination of quite a bit of hard work from many people (especially Leo). Nice work all. http://xrl.us/hvbp -- bit of review http://xrl.us/hvbq -- merge Amber PMCs Roger Browne wondered how he should include Amber PMCs. Leo and Will suggested he put the pmcs into the languages directory similar to the way Tcl does it. http://xrl.us/hvbr Data::Escape Needs Tests Jerry Gay added a TODO for tests for Data::Escape. This would be a great thing for an eager lurker to cut his or her teeth on. http://xrl.us/hvbs Magic Numbers Bad, Magic Strings Good Last weeks magic thread ended down with the conclusion that Parrot would use a magic string instead of a magic number. http://xrl.us/hvbt Tests fail on win32 Jerry Gay opened a new RT ticket for some failing tests on Windows. http://xrl.us/hvbu Here Doc in PIR Will Coleda revived a thread from February about PIR here doc syntax. Looks like the syntax is ok. http://xrl.us/hvbv Win32 PCRE François Perrad enabled PCRE on Win32. Jerry Gay applied the patch. http://xrl.us/hvbw PLATFORMS and MinGW François Perrad updated the PLATFORMS file for MinGW. http://xrl.us/hvbx parrot_config dependency Nick Glencross provided a patch (for comment only) that eases the dependency on parrot_config. I am not sure that he got many comments. http://xrl.us/hvby Data::Escape::String Dislikes Unicode Will noticed that Data::Escape::String doesn't work on Unicode strings. http://xrl.us/hvbz Make Cleanup Joshua Hoblitt started RT tickets for several things that are part of a general make system clean up. http://xrl.us/hvb2 http://xrl.us/hvb3 http://xrl.us/hvb4 Parrot Leaves Crumbs Nick Glencross rediscovered the core files that parrot leaves around. This is a known problem. http://xrl.us/hvb5 Parrot Threads Dave Frost wondered what the plan for Parrot Threading was going to be. The answer (provided by Leo with more details from Jonathan Worthington) was OS threads. http://xrl.us/hvb6 Once deprecation's lost its fun... Leo went on a bit of fall cleaning adding things to the deprecated list. He even threatened to resolve some of them soon. http://xrl.us/hvb7 http://xrl.us/hvb8 http://xrl.us/hvb9 http://xrl.us/hvca Lexical and Variable Sized Register Frames With the calling conventions having been redone, Leo has plans to move to system of dynamically sized registers frames with static lexicals stored directly in them. Chip should produce details soon. http://xrl.us/hvcb Exception Handling Bug Roger Browne found a bug with exception handlers in the new scheme. Leo fixed it. I wonder if anyone made a test out of it... http://xrl.us/hvcc Config missing output Will Coleda noticed that Configure.pl was not outputting a response to a step on his platform. http://xrl.us/hvcd Parrot 0.3.0 TODO Robert J Eaglestone wondered what would be a good way of chipping in. Will Coleda, predictably, tried to turn him towards working for the good of Tcl. http://xrl.us/hvce Tru64 Issues Jarkko Hietaniemi appears to have recently come into some time with a Tru64 machine. He found lots of problems, which he added to RT, so I won't link them here. src/extends.c chromatic made good on a promise to auto generate src/extends.c automatically. Leo quibbled over pod, but thought it was good. http://xrl.us/hvcf Calling Vtable
Re: [perl #31285] [PATCH] first step in implementing a SCons base build
Joshua~ On 10/3/05, Joshua Hoblitt via RT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Sun Aug 22 17:19:34 2004]: All~ This patch is an early step in getting a scons based build system for parrot. Currently, it leaves the make system in place, the goal being to add a SCons system alongside the make system until the scons one is entirely ready. This patch allows scons to build foo.c and foo.dump files from foo.pmc. It will automatically detect dependencies between various PMC's and rebuild them as appropriate. Obviously this requires SCons to be installed on the system (and SCons requires Python). But since parrot can be built without it, I figured that this was a non-issue. If any one has a burning itch to implement other parts of this system, feel free to email me so we can collaborate. Have fun, Matt Matt, There has been alot of discussion about build systems on #parrot recently so I'm CCing p6i. Is SCons really an option for Parrot? I don't really know much about it but since it's implimented in Python, and Python hasn't been ported to all the platforms we hope to run on, wouldn't it introduce a serious portability issue? -J I brought it up on the list first, and Dan was OK with it because scons can output a series of commands (like a bat file or batch script) to build from scratch (no smart dependency checks). This also provides a way to break the make dependency. All that having been said, I probably won't get around to finishing this anytime soon, and I don't think most of the others are interested in it. Although it also would solve the problem of our make system being broken WRT dependency checking. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: [perl #17490] Magic is useless unless verifiable.
Jonathan~ On 9/22/05, Jonathan Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Roger Browne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you do tweak the signature for the packfile format, I suggest you take a leaf out of the PNG specification and ensure that the signature will robustly detect common errors such as byte order transpositions, CRLF-to-newline mappings (e.g. when binary files are FTPd using ASCII mode), etc. See section 12.11 of the PNG specification: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2083.html Interesting, thanks - they make some good suggestions there. Our current magic number is 13155a1 - I'm unsure of the rationale behind it, but there may be a reason. If we're going to change the packfile format, we may as well make sure we're squeezing whatever use we can out of our magic number. Mark A. Biggar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Joshua Hoblitt wrote: a) live with it b) change the magic number to be two identical bytes so the byte ordering doesn't matter c) shrink the magic number to be a single byte When I talked about doing something endian-independent, I meant something along the lines of store a sequence of, say, 4 bytes that will have certain values. Forget reading the 4 bytes as an int at all, read it as a char[4] and check each element is what it should be. Makes adding support to file easy enough, and is my preferred solution. d) use a magic number that can also be used as the byte order indicator. Clever, though not sure it helps with writing something to independently identify a Parrot packfile, if it can be one of a number of things (though I guess in this case, one of only two things - unless there's some insane ordering scheme I've not heard of). I have seen architectures that swap byte ordering for 8 byte things (like doubles) but not 4 byte things. So that gives 3 options and requires an 8 byte magic number if you want to do it that way. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: #34394: [TODO] implement the splice vtable in *PMCArrays
Jonathan~ On 9/19/05, Jonathan Worthington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nicholas Dronen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Sep 18, 2005 at 11:48:08PM +0100, Jonathan Worthington wrote: [ snip ] I guess if I could offer any advice, it'd be don't be afraid of asking questions and also expect to have to look at the source to figure some stuff out, because the docs aren't always as great or up to date as you might hope. Noting where the docs seem wrong/missing/unclear, or if you can and have the time sending in a patch to correct them, would be a big help. Taking your advice to heart, I'll dive in with an initial question about this particular bug. :-) I don't know which particular files *PMCArrays refers to in #34394. I assume that at least some of the C source files in classes/ that use Parrot_default_splice instead of their own splice instead of Parrot_*PMCArray_splice are the ones that need to be changed. $ grep -l Parrot_default_splice *.c | grep array fixedbooleanarray.c fixedfloatarray.c fixedintegerarray.c fixedpmcarray.c fixedstringarray.c floatvalarray.c resizablebooleanarray.c resizablefloatarray.c resizableintegerarray.c resizablepmcarray.c resizablestringarray.c sarray.c stringarray.c I'll start with fixedpmcarray.c, but #34394 also mentions boolean arrays. Any others? The C files are not the things you want to be modifying, but rather the .pmc files in the classes directory. The .c files are generated from the .pmc files. So when you modify a .pmc file, then do a make, a new .c file is generated and then compiled, etc. The ticket says:- The splice opcode has the functionality of the perl5 function, so that should be rather straight to implement. See also classes/array.pmc:splice. FixedPMCArray can have a splice too, if the array limit isn't hit. So I guess this means implement splice in ResizablePMCArray.pmc and FixedPMCArray.pmc first. Then later other arrays can be done, but I'm guessing again from the ticket that they used a different allocation scheme and that needs changing too. There's quite a bit to this task I think - so I suggest have a go at the *pmcarray.pmc files first. I updated the allocation schemes about a month ago. So they should all use the same one (except boolean which uses bits (I think)). Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-09-12 through 2005-09-19
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-09-12 through 2005-09-19 All~ Welcome to another Perl 6 Summary, this time brought to you with a shorter pause (::grumble:: $WORK ::grumble::) and assisted by cookies. Perl 6 Compilers Circular Preludes for Fun and Confusion Yuval Kogman posted a really interesting idea of using a circular prelude to facilitate creation of a new run time. If the prelude defines everything it can in terms of itself (even circularly if need be), then a new run time implementer can break the circle wherever is most convenient for the run time. It looks really cool to me. http://xrl.us/hn6h PxPerl Site Change Grégoire Péan announced that he was having problems with his old domain and that PxPerl is now hosted at http://pxperl.com http://xrl.us/hn6i Parrot 13! == BIG! James Ghofulpo noticed that the example factorial program included with Parrot gives incorrect results on 32 bit machines. Will Coleda offered to clean the old PASM examples into shiny new PIR. http://xrl.us/hn6j Properly Formatted POD Unlike these summaries, Parrot's docs should be in properly formatted POD. Joshua Hoblitt provided patches to fix them up and test them. Bernhard Schmalhofer applied the patches. http://xrl.us/hn6k Bad IMCC Error Message Joshua Hoblitt opened an RT ticket for the error message imcc outputs upon seeing a non-existent PMC. No takers yet. http://xrl.us/hn6m Globbing Like Tcl Amos Robinson opened am RT ticket requesting Tcl Syntax Globbing in PGE. http://xrl.us/hn6n AMD64 Build Error Joshua Hoblitt posted a build error involving posix_memalign on AMD64. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/hn6o TODO: Call for B0rked chromatic the capless put out a call for specific TODO items that Parrot needed. Many people provided suggestions. http://xrl.us/hn6p Documentation Keyword Tagging Joshua Hoblitt opened a ticket requesting keyword tagging (via ) . http://xrl.us/hn6q leo-ctx5 on Win32 François Perrad solved a few link problems on Win32 for the leo-ctx5 branch. Jonathan Worthington applied it. http://xrl.us/hn6r Support Different Compilers Andy Dougherty provided a patch making it easier to compile parrot with a different options then Perl 5. Bernhard Schmalhofer tentatively applied it, but despite his fears nobody hollered. http://xrl.us/hn6s Tcl Leo's Context My that sounds dirty Regardless Leo and Will Coleda, with much help from assorted others) managed to get all of the Tcl tests passing in the leo-ctx5 branch. http://xrl.us/hn6t 4 Down 7204 to Go Andy Dougherty posted a patch which eliminates 4 of Parrot 7208 compiler warnings on SPARC. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/hn6u Circular Finalization Returns From the Dead Nicholas Clark wondered how Parrot would handle PMC loops with finalizers. Leo and I provided some ideas. Nothing is officially specced yet. http://xrl.us/hn6v make cleaner Joshua Hoblitt provided a patch which makes make clean cleaner. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/hn6w Pack Packfiles, Fix Fixups Jonathan Worthington split the fixup and unpack functionality of Packfiles so that he could later create a pbc_merge. Later he did that. http://xrl.us/hn6x -- earlier http://xrl.us/hn6y -- later Taking Exception to Leo's Tcl Some days my head is just in the gutter. Will Coleda update Tcl to use exceptions for TCL_RETURN, which apparently simplifies things. http://xrl.us/hn6z Tcl on Windows Jerry Gay noticed that Tcl was not building on Windows. Will Coleda suspected that it got fixed; he was right. http://xrl.us/hn62 Implementing Splice Nicholas Dronen decided to try and implement splice in *PMCArrays, after suggestions from Leo and Jonathan Worthington. I have found these Arrays to be good starting points in the past. Good luck, Nick. http://xrl.us/hn63 Optimize MinGW François Perrad provided a patch making Configure.pl --optimize and Configure.pl --optimize=flags work on MinGW. Jonathan Worthington applied it. http://xrl.us/hn64 Perl 6 Language Object Model Pictures Stevan Little posted the latest pictures of his MetaModel. Nathan Gray thanked him and put out a quiet request for a diagram about roles. http://xrl.us/hn65 Coersive Context Juerd posted his thoughts about using types as context specifiers and coercers. Reaction seemed interested but limited. http://xrl.us/hn66 Perl 6 and Undefined Behavior Nicholas Clark asked if Perl 6 was going to have any undefined behavior or guarantee any sequence points. Larry does not want to have any undefined behavior, but thinks that the reference implementations quirks might be the definer for certain things. He did point
Re: destruction of loops
Nick~ Dan's plan was to do a topographic sort of the object tree to avoid this problem for non-loops and to break loops randomly. I believe he was even tempted to call rand in there just to make sure people didn't come to depend on a behavior... I think it might be wise for us to make all the destruction calls before memory reclamation and replace each objects vtable with undef after its call. Matt On 9/15/05, Nicholas Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 02:37:33PM +0200, Leopold Toetsch wrote: Parrot calls the destroy vtable function for all PMCs that have marked themselves with PObj_active_destroy_FLAG, when the object gets recycled due to GC *or* at program exit. If I have 2 objects in a self-referencing loop, what happens? A---+ ^ | | v +---B Clearly mark and sweep can spot these things before the end of the world, but how does all the destruction work? The GC has to call one PMC's destroy first, so let's call that one A. A's destroy gets called. At this time A is pointing to a valid B object, so it can make calls on B. At the end of this call, A is (presumably) in a consistent state, but not a state consistent with having other methods called on it. But is its vtable still active? Or is the vtable replaced with something else? Because what must come next is that B's destroy gets called. And as B still has a pointer to A, B might (naïvely) try to make calls on A. Or are all objects that actively destroy themselves also expected to actively swap their vtables to something safe? I'm not sure if this messy call on a destructed object scenario can occur for non-active-destroy objects. Nicholas Clark -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: destruction of loops
Nick~ On 9/15/05, Nicholas Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Sep 15, 2005 at 01:13:17PM -0400, Matt Fowles wrote: Nick~ Dan's plan was to do a topographic sort of the object tree to avoid this problem for non-loops and to break loops randomly. I believe he was even tempted to call rand in there just to make sure people didn't come to depend on a behavior... I agree with the use of rand. I think it might be wise for us to make all the destruction calls before memory reclamation and replace each objects vtable with undef after its call. Setting to undef is in effect what Perl 5 does (although this can only happen at global destruction time), because when a scalar is reclaimed, its 24 flag bits are set to all zero, which is consistent with undef. I'm not sure that there is any other safe way, and it seems better that the VM does it rather than rely on every PMC duplicating the code. Although the idea of a PMC that has both finalize and destroy vtable entries clouds the issue, because it would still need to see its vtable for destroy. I wonder if it makes sense for these to have an undef derivative that has destroy and actually stores 1 item - the original vtable entry, and swaps that vtable back in just to call destroy. I disagree with the choice to have both finalize and destroy... If we must have both we could ensure that destroy is called immediately after finalize (but before VTABLE swap). Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-15 through 2005-08-22
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-15 through 2005-08-22
All~
Welcome to another monday summary, which hopefully provides some
evidence that mondays can get better. It always feels like writing
summaries is an uphill battle, perhaps I should switch to writing about
Perl 6 Language first and Perl 6 Compilers last. Then it will be
downhill... Maybe next time.
Perl 6 Compilers
More Random Pictures
Autrijus posted links to two more images he had created. This time the
images were not about pugs, but were just kind of cute. He also provided
an explanation of one when prompted.
http://xrl.us/g8bw
Methods as Functions
Yiyi Hu noticed that a method of one argument could not be used as
function. Autrijus offered Yiyi a commit bit, but also kindly posted the
resolution to Perl 6 Language. Thanks Autrijus!
http://xrl.us/g8bx
Methods on Code Blocks
Yiyi Hu discovered that { a b c }.paris would cause pugs to spin out
of control. Luke Palmer fixed it. Hopefully one of the two of them added
a test...
http://xrl.us/g8by
Autrijus's Secret Sauce
Kris Bosland asked a few question I have been wondering about Autrijus
new graphics. Autrijus kindly provided the answers.
http://xrl.us/g8bz
Documentation Attack
Kevin Tew has decided the best way for him to delurk is to update
documentation for Pugs. chromatic and Dudley Flanders both provided
support, information, and suggestions for him.
http://xrl.us/g8b2
Neko VM
Nicolas Cannasse announed his release of a high level multi language VM
and wondered what others thought of creating a Perl 6 to to Neko
compiler. Autrijus and Leo provided a few corrections and comments.
http://xrl.us/g8b3
Parrot
The FAQ, She is GONE!
Amias Channer noticed that the faq on parrotcode.org was gone. While he
was warnocked, the faq appears to be back.
http://xrl.us/g8b4
Platform Specific C Files
Stephen Hill wanted to know where to put a platform specific C file to
provide missing functionality. Leo provided a few friendly pointers.
http://xrl.us/g8b5
TclArray.get
Amos Robinson provided an implementation of get for TclArray. Will
greatfully applied the patch.
http://xrl.us/g8b6
ICU Being Passed Up
Adrian Lambeck wondered if icu was being passed up by Configure.pl.
Warnock applied. So Adrian took matter into his own hands by providing a
possible solution. Jerry Gay offered to take ownership of the problem if
no ICU enabled soul picked it up. No progress reports since then
though...
http://xrl.us/g8b7
http://xrl.us/g8b8
Java on Parrot
Tim Bunce asked some preliminary questions about Java on Parrot. I
provide preliminary answers, and Nattfodd and Autrijus posted links to
related work. The important question of what it should be called
remained unraised. I vote for Jot.
http://xrl.us/g8b9
gdbmhash.t Failures
Tim Bunce noticed that gdbmhash.t was failing with an unhelpful error
message. Andy Dougherty provided a patch that made the error message
slightly more helpful. Jerry Gay applied it.
http://xrl.us/g8ca
BEGIN Blocks
Leo posted some thoughts and information about BEGIN blocks in Perl 6
and the @IMMEDIATE pragma in PIR, it involved creating constant PMCs and
freezing them into the bytecode. Then he made it work.
http://xrl.us/g8cb -- thoughts
http://xrl.us/g8cc -- actions
Amber for Parrot
Citing chatter overheard on its intelligence networks Parrot raised the
terror alert to Amber, or maybe Roger Browne released version 0.2.3 of
his Eiffel-like scripting language, Amber. I can never keep track of
these things.
http://xrl.us/g8cd
Tcl parray
Amos Robinson offered to provide an implementation of Tcl's parray
inluding tests. Will wanted to apply it, but the attachment did not come
through.
http://xrl.us/g8ce
Parrot vs Neko
Nicolas Cannasse wondered why Parrot performed so poorly on the fib
benchmark. Leo explained that this benchmark stressed a currently
unoptimized portion of parrot (function calls). He also provided a few
pointers on which benchmarks parrot did well on.
http://xrl.us/g8cf
Using PMCs from C
Klaas-Jan Stol's Lua compiler uses only PMCs. Thus he wanted to know how
to access these PMCs from NCI functions. Leo provided an answer, but
also suggest he looked at the new calling conventions which would do
auto-conversion in both directions.
http://xrl.us/g8cg
PMC for Reference Counting
Nicholas Clark posted a relatively full analysis of how the DODs
registration system could be generalized for further reuse. He also
asked for ideas about names. I think the whole thing looks good and that
AddrRegistry is a good name. Perhaps that has too many vowels...
AddrRgstry and sometimes AddrRgstr
Re: Parrot - Java integration
Tim~ On 8/15/05, Tim Bunce [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Anyone given any thought to Parrot - Java integration? Possible? Definitely. Practical? You would likely lose some speed, but that is really all. How much would would be involved? Not a whole lot more than making a java compiler for anything else. But it would still be the somewhat large undertaking of making a java compiler. (Yes, this is a bit of a duck cause I don't know specifics) Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Re: [Fwd: call opcodes cleanup]
Leo~ On 8/10/05, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ /me warnock fighting - and update below for method calls ] Original Message Subject: call opcodes cleanup Date: Thu, 21 Jul 2005 09:52:07 +0200 From: Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Perl 6 Internals perl6-internals@perl.org There are still some leftovers of the old calling scheme, which I'd like to get rid of (1,2) or change slightly (3): 1) bare invoke This opcode assumes P0 = Sub, P1 = Continuation 2) bare invokecc This opcode assumes P0 = Sub 3) invoke Px This opcode assumes P1 = Continuation, but it has a double usage: call a coroutine (not the first time) and yield from a coroutine with this code sequence: interpinfo Px, .INTERPINFO_CURRENT_SUB invoke Px Instead I'd like to have distinct opcodes, that carry the effects on operands clearly in their signature. The replacement for above would be: 1) invoke PSub, PCont # call sub with given continuation 2) invokecc PSub# call sub, create continuation - exists 3a) invoke PCoro# call sub, leave continuation as is 3b) yield # yield results from a coroutine 3a) exists too, but it currently picks up a continuation in P1. Rational: the register allocator has to track the usage of all symbols. For all the implicit register usage, extra code is needed that tracks register usage. See trunk imcc/cfg.c for details. I like this, especially the motivation. - Method call opcodes We currently have these opcodes: 4a) callmethod Implicit registers used: S0 = method, P1 = continuation, P2 = invocant/object 4b) callmethod Smeth 5a) callmethodcc 5b) callmethodcc Smeth We probably need just one opcode: 5) callmethodcc Pinvocant, Smeth (maybe callmethod Pinvocant, Smeth, Pcont) I think that we should have the second option (as that is an easy way to have tailmethods). We might also want a C callmethod Pinvocant, Pmeth, Pcont if we allow methods that are pmcs. (This might allow hoisting the string lookup outside a loop or something). Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-02 through 2005-08-10
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-08-02 through 2005-08-10 All~ Welcome to another summary, brought to you by chinese food. The attentive among you will notice that this summary is a day late, because I did not feel like doing it yesterday. If only I could do that at work... Perl 6 Compilers Pugs Argument Processing Vadim Konovalov submitted a patch to pugs affecting @*ARGS processing. Maybe it got applied, maybe not, Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/g3op Type Inferencing Autrijus wants to type push perl 6's type inferencing as far as it can go (and maybe a little beyond). To this end he has been soliciting input from all comers. It looks like he has put a lot of thought and research into it. One day I expect to be thanking Autrijus for important (if likely difficult to understand) compiler errors and warnings.. http://xrl.us/g3oq WWW::Kontent Release Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon announced the release of WWW::Kontent 0.01: a flexible web content management system written in Perl 6 and executable with Pugs. It looks nifty to me... Maybe we need to fight Ruby on Rails with Perl 6 on Pylons or something. That doesn't quite have the right ring to it... there has to be something catch there somewhere. http://xrl.us/g3or Array Interpolation Phil Crow wondered why his arrays were not being interpolated in pugs. Ingo Blechschmidt and Patrick explained that @foo does not interpolate, but @foo[] does. I sense a frequently asked question here... http://xrl.us/g3os Pugs 6.2.9 Released Autrijus announced the release of Pugs 6.2.9. It is full of nifty new feaures including the ability to lay on hands! http://xrl.us/g3ot Whitespace Before Parens Andrew Shitov wondered why whitespace between function name and parens was no longer allowed. Autrijus explained that it allows print (1+2)*3 to print 9 instead of 3. As someone who just last week explained the pecularity of ruby printing 3 in the above situation to a complete novice, I welcome the change. http://xrl.us/g3ou Contain Model Pictures Autrijus posted a few pretty pictures explaining the compiler and container models. While the compiler model was readily understandable to me, the container one wasn't. Fortunately, when prompted Autrijus provided a great explanation to accompany the diagram. http://xrl.us/g3ov -- thread http://xrl.us/g3ow -- containers http://xrl.us/g3ox -- compilation PxPerl 5.8.7-4 Upon discovering that Pugs released a new version, Grégoire Péan released a new version of PxPerl that includes the new Pugs. I (and many others) thank Grégoire for lowering the entry bar for Perl 6 hacking on windows. http://xrl.us/g3oy Hosting Lexical Declarations Declaring lexicals mid block confuses things, expecially declaring them mid statement as in $x = $x + my $x if $x; . Autrijus proposed hoisting declarations of lexicals to the top of the block. Unfortunately, this can make CALLER:: do funny things. Thus, he suggests outlawing it. Larry agreed. http://xrl.us/g3oz Parrot export LD_LIBRARY_PATH Bdonlan noticed that parrot's test suite was not setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH which makes tests fail. Leo pointed out that most users manually set their LD_LIBRARY_PATH as parrot often needs this, but he agreed that the tests should do it just in case. http://xrl.us/g3o2 Improved Argument Processing for ops2c.pl Tom submitted a patch which improves the command line argument processing powers of ops2c.pl. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/g3o3 ANSI Escape Codes in Parrot Klaas-Jan Stol was having trouble putting special characters like ANSI clear screen and ¥ into strings. Nick pointed out that he need to be careful with encodings and escapes. In parrot \O is an octal escape, in Lua it is apparently not. http://xrl.us/g3o4 Parrot 0.2.3 Leo announced the release of Parrot 0.2.3 Serenity, which reminds me, Firefly is coming back soon!! I can't wait! Oddly google seems to have swallowed his release notice but not his warnings... http://xrl.us/g3o5 Strange Filename Based Bug Michal Wallace found a bug that would disappear if the file was renamed. Leo, with the help of valgrind, provided Michal with a pointer. Michal used that to find a likely culprit and provide a patch, which Leo then refined. http://xrl.us/g3o6 GDBM Hash on MinGW François Perrad provided a patch fixing gdbmhash on MinGW. Bernhard Schmalhofer applied it. http://xrl.us/g3o7 PyString Link Problem François Perrad also fixed a link problem with pystring.o. Jonathan Worthington applied that patch. http://xrl.us/g3o8 Filling a Large Data Structure Amir Karger wanted to know how to fill a large data structure in PIR other than
Re: [perl #36647] 'make languages' should continue after building a language failed
Will~ Doesn't make have something called PHONY to handle that exact case? Matt On 7/27/05, Will Coleda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is because there's a directory called tcl. Since the directly already exists, there'd be nothing to make. Picking a dummy target like this is a way to force the target to always be built, regardless. On Jul 27, 2005, at 10:00 AM, Jerry Gay via RT wrote: leo's fix (r8695) works just fine on windows :) but what is all this .dummy business? tcl: tcl.dummy tcl.dummy: - $(MAKE_C) tcl tcl.test: - $(MAKE_C) tcl test tcl.clean: - $(MAKE_C) tcl clean can't that just be tcl: - $(MAKE_C) tcl etc. ~jerry -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -Stan Kelly-Bootle, The Devil's DP Dictionary
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-07-19 through 2005-07-26
plugged a few leaks caused by string_to_cstring.
Leo applied the patch.
http://xrl.us/gv67
Deleting Globals/Lexicals
Matt Diephouse noted that there was no way to delete globals or
lexicals. Leo posted one (untested) way to do it.
http://xrl.us/gv68
Generating Win32 Executables
Jonathan Worthington laid some ground work for generating executables on
windows. Leo applied the patch.
http://xrl.us/gv69
Library Loading on Win32
Jonathan Worthington beefed up the library searching logic in Parrot to
be a little more Windowsy. Leo applied the patch.
http://xrl.us/gv7a
PBC Merge Utility
Leo posted a request for a utility that could merge several pbc files
into one.
http://xrl.us/gv7b
Calling Super Methods
Matt Diephouse noticed that there was no way to call the method from a
super class. Leo pointed out a way to do it by accessing the slots of
the parent directly.
http://xrl.us/gv7c
Cmd Buffer Reallocation
Greg Bacon fixed a bug in the reallocation of the cmd buffer on Win32.
Jonathan Worthington applied the patch.
http://xrl.us/gv7d
Data::Dump(PGE)
Will Coleda added a TODO for making PGE's match objects compatible with
Data::Dumper.
http://xrl.us/gv7e
does Hash
Will Coleda wants Data::Dumper to check if an object does Hash or Array
and dump it thusly if no default dump is implemented.
http://xrl.us/gv7f
rx.ops's future
Will Coleda wondered what the future of the rx ops. Brent 'Dax'
Royal-Gordon, who wrote them, recons they are not long for this work. He
reckonned that the intstacks and the bitmap handling code might be worth
saving.
http://xrl.us/gv7g
Debugger - List breakpoints
Will Coleda noticed that the debugger was not quite compatible with
perl's. Leo replied that the debuggers whole command loop was a mess
that required a turn of the crank.
http://xrl.us/gv7h
\u escape issues
Will Coleda opened a ticket for some unicode escape issues. Leo asked
for a test case.
http://xrl.us/gv7i
string - int conversions
Matt Diephouse noticed that there was no opcode Octal and Hex
conversions. Leo suggested adding one of the form set Ix, Sy, Ibase #
Ibase = 2..36 .
http://xrl.us/gv7j
Make make languages Failures Nonfatal
Bernhard Schmalhofer suggested that make languages should not give
up after the first failure, but should instead build the remaining
languages.
http://xrl.us/gv7k
Dynclasses on Windows
Nick Glencross and Jonathan Worthington discussed how to make dynclasses
build on windows.
http://xrl.us/gv7m
Resizable*Array Allocation
Matt Fowles submitted a patch making all the various Resizeable*Array
pmcs share their allocation strategy. Bernhard Schmalhofer applied the
patch.
http://xrl.us/gv7n
MMD Roundup - Take 2
Nicholas Clark attempted to dewarnock a suggested change by Leo.
Unfortunately, his thoughts on the matter were this is really a call
for the designer to make, isn't it?. Leo suggested starting a WARNOCKED
file for these things. Will countered that adding it to the DESIGN
section in docs/ROADMAP, so Chip needs only look in one place.
http://xrl.us/gv7o
Parrot Failures on OS X
Nicholas Clark forwards some failures on OS X to the Parrot list (from
the Ponie one).
http://xrl.us/gv7p
Parrot Needs stderr
Nicholas Clark noticed that running parrot with a closed stderr, makes
parrot unhappy.
http://xrl.us/gv7q
GMC
Alexandre Buisse and many others have been talking about his Generation
Mark and Compact Garbage Collector. Plans are rapidly taking shape.
http://xrl.us/gv7r
Perl 6 Language
User Defined Context Behavior
Ingo Blechschmidt wanted to know how to make is own custom class that
would act specially in list context. Thomas Sandlaß suggested
overloading infix:=. Sadly, his answer doesn't seem to have made it
to google groups.
http://xrl.us/gv7s
Hash Creation with Duplicate Keys
Ingo Blechschmidt noticed that in Perl 5 hash definitions the right most
duplicate one, whereas the left most wins in Perl 6. He was wondering if
this was a bug or not. Luke explained that it was that way for named
variable bindings. Larry figured it should be that way ONLY for named
variable binding. If Pugs has not done it yet, some brave soul could
probably add tests and find it implemented before they had finished
committing.
http://xrl.us/gv7t
Tail Calls, Methods, and Currying
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon wondered about Tail calls, noting that the
current method $obj.can('meth').goto($obj, [EMAIL PROTECTED]); was
kinda ugly.
Larry mused that return g() should go ahead and tail call. If the
code does not want a tailcall there then it should avoid it manually.
http://xrl.us
[perl #36644] [PATCH] switched resizable*arrays to use resizablepmcarray's allocation strategy
), NEEDED_SIZE(sd-size));
-PObj_active_destroy_SET(dest);
-return dest;
+PMC *copy = SUPER();
+/* copy trimmed extra space */
+PMC_int_val2(copy) = PMC_int_val(SELF);
+return copy;
}
}
@@ -192,6 +189,7 @@
Initial version - Matt Fowles 2004-06-11
Changed allocator to double size - Matt Fowles 2004-06-15
Added push_integer - Bernhard Schmalhofer 2004-10-17
+moved available size to int_val2 - Matt Fowles 2005-07-22
=cut
Index: classes/resizablefloatarray.pmc
===
--- classes/resizablefloatarray.pmc (revision 8687)
+++ classes/resizablefloatarray.pmc (working copy)
@@ -22,12 +22,6 @@
#include parrot/parrot.h
-typedef struct _SizeFloatData {
-INTVAL size;
-FLOATVAL data[1];
-} SizeFloatData;
-#define NEEDED_SIZE(n) ((n-1)*sizeof(FLOATVAL) + sizeof(SizeFloatData))
-
pmclass ResizableFloatArray extends FixedFloatArray need_ext does array {
@@ -42,15 +36,15 @@
*/
FLOATVAL get_number_keyed_int (INTVAL key) {
-SizeFloatData *sd;
+FLOATVAL *data;
if (key 0)
internal_exception(OUT_OF_BOUNDS,
ResizableFloatArray: index out of bounds!);
if (key = PMC_int_val(SELF))
DYNSELF.set_integer_native(key+1);
-sd = (SizeFloatData *)PMC_data(SELF);
-return sd-data[key];
+data = (FLOATVAL *)PMC_data(SELF);
+return data[key];
}
/*
@@ -65,15 +59,15 @@
*/
void set_number_keyed_int (INTVAL key, FLOATVAL value) {
-SizeFloatData *sd;
+FLOATVAL *data;
if (key 0)
internal_exception(OUT_OF_BOUNDS,
ResizableFloatArray: index out of bounds!);
if(key = PMC_int_val(SELF))
DYNSELF.set_integer_native(key+1);
-sd = (SizeFloatData *)PMC_data(SELF);
-sd-data[key] = value;
+data = (FLOATVAL *)PMC_data(SELF);
+data[key] = value;
}
/*
@@ -94,28 +88,42 @@
*/
void set_integer_native (INTVAL size) {
-SizeFloatData *sd;
if (size 0)
internal_exception(OUT_OF_BOUNDS,
ResizableFloatArray: Can't resize to negative value!);
-sd = PMC_data(SELF);
-PMC_int_val(SELF) = size;
-if (sd == NULL) {
-sd = mem_sys_allocate(NEEDED_SIZE(size));
-sd-size = size;
-} else if (size = sd-size) {
-sd-size = size 2 * sd-size ? 2 * sd-size : size;
-sd = mem_sys_realloc(sd, NEEDED_SIZE(sd-size));
-} else if (size sd-size / 2) {
-sd-size = size * 3 / 2;
-sd = mem_sys_realloc(sd, NEEDED_SIZE(sd-size));
-} else {
+if(!PMC_data(SELF)) {
+/* empty - used fixed routine */
+if (size 8) {
+SUPER(8);
+PMC_int_val(SELF) = size;
+PMC_int_val2(SELF) = 8;
+}
+else {
+SUPER(size);
+PMC_int_val2(SELF) = size;
+}
+}
+else if (size = PMC_int_val2(SELF)) {
+PMC_int_val(SELF) = size;
+/* we could shrink here if necessary */
return;
}
-
-PMC_data(SELF) = sd;
-PObj_active_destroy_SET(SELF);
+else {
+INTVAL cur, needed;
+cur = PMC_int_val2(SELF);
+if (cur 8192)
+cur = size 2 * cur ? 2 * cur : size;
+else {
+needed = size - cur;
+cur += needed + 4096;
+cur = ~0xfff;
+}
+PMC_data(SELF) = mem_sys_realloc(PMC_data(SELF),
+cur * sizeof(FLOATVAL));
+PMC_int_val2(SELF) = cur;
+PMC_int_val(SELF) = size;
+}
}
/*
@@ -129,18 +137,10 @@
*/
PMC* clone () {
-SizeFloatData *sd;
-PMC * dest = pmc_new(INTERP, SELF-vtable-base_type);
-
-if (!PMC_data(SELF))
-return dest;
-PMC_int_val(dest) = PMC_int_val(SELF);
-sd = PMC_data(SELF);
-
-PMC_data(dest) = mem_sys_allocate(NEEDED_SIZE(sd-size));
-mem_sys_memcopy(PMC_data(dest), PMC_data(SELF), NEEDED_SIZE(sd-size));
-PObj_active_destroy_SET(dest);
-return dest;
+PMC *copy = SUPER();
+/* copy trimmed extra space */
+PMC_int_val2(copy) = PMC_int_val(SELF);
+return copy;
}
/*
@@ -154,13 +154,8 @@
*/
void push_float (FLOATVAL value) {
-INTVAL size;
-SizeFloatData *sd;
-
-size = PMC_int_val(SELF);
-DYNSELF.set_integer_native(size+1);
-sd = (SizeFloatData *)PMC_data(SELF);
-sd-data[size] = value;
+INTVAL nextix = DYNSELF.elements();
+DYNSELF.set_number_keyed_int(nextix, value);
}
/*
@@ -176,19 +171,16 @@
FLOATVAL pop_float
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-07-05 through 2005-07-12
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-07-05 through 2005-07-12 All~ Welcome to another summary from the frog house. A house so green it can be seen from outerspace (according to google earth). Perl 6 Compiler Building Pugs Workaround Sam Vilain posted a useful work around to the error error: field `_crypt_struct' has incomplete type which occurs on some systems. Fortunately, Salvador Ortiz Garcia found a fix. http://xrl.us/gqjy http://xrl.us/gqjz Pugs, Pirate. Pirate, Pugs. Autrijus began plotting with the Pirate folks. Thoughts include unifying PIL and PAST or possibly retargeting PIL to PAST. Perhaps the result should be a more nautical dog... maybe schipperke. http://xrl.us/gqj2 Implicit Invocants and Pain Larry (as will be summarized later) ruled that ./method was gone. he further ruled that .method would pitch fits at either compile or run time if $_ =:= $?SELF was false. Autrijus found this quite difficult to implement. Talk continues, my instincts tell me that this too will pass, although Larry assures us that it is absolutely permanent for at least a week. http://xrl.us/gqj3 Parrot Key Question Klass-Jan Stol found that using a assigning a floating point value to a key and then using it make parrot segfault. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/gqj4 Parrot Copyrights Allison Randal hinted that The Perl Foundation has almost finished hammering out some legal stuff and there will soon be sweeping changes throughout the repository addressing copyright issues. http://xrl.us/gqj5 Character Classes in Globs Will Coleda noted that Tcl would pass more tests if PGE supported characters classes in globs. Patrick, unable to resist the siren call of passing tests, implemented it. http://xrl.us/gqj6 Amber for Parrot Roger Browne announced that he had succeed in extracting viable DNA from a Parrot encased in amber since the Jurasic age. Either that or he release Amber version 0.2.2... not sure which. http://xrl.us/gqj7 Leo's Branch Leo has created a branch in SVN (branches/leo-ctx5) of his work implementing the new calling conventions. This led to some discussion of how to deal with optional arguments. http://xrl.us/gqj8 http://xrl.us/gqj9 Leo's Branch Meets mod_parrot Jeff Horwitz posted some observations and troubles he was having with Leo's branch of new calling conventions. Leo warned that the branch was still young, but would gladly take test cases. http://xrl.us/gqka Leo's Branch Meets PGE After the initial discussion of optional parameter, Patrick updated the leo_ctx5 branch of PGE to the new calling conventions. All tests pass. http://xrl.us/gqkb Get onto the Bus Matt Diephouse found a Bus Error when running languages/tcl/examples/bench.tcl. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/gqkc MinGW Patch Resurrection François Perrad resurected a patch from mid June with a set of action items. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/gqkd Scared Parrots Like Scheme Joh Lenz posted an announcement that he had an alpha version of Chicken (a Scheme to C compiler) backending to Parrot. Leo provided answers to some of his questions. http://xrl.us/gqke Bytecode vs PMCs Matt Diephouse posted a list of questions about the place of PMCs. Some of the core tradeoffs include: maintability, portability, optimization, duplicate implementations, and security. http://xrl.us/gqkf make svnclean Leo pointed out that make svnclean got removed, but that he found it useful. Chip suggested that it be renamed make svnclobber, as it does more than just clean. http://xrl.us/gqkg pmc2c.pl Bug Nicholas Clark found a bug in the shortcut to avoid writing a pmc dump file. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/gqkh Define cache Nicholas Clark suggested that it was probably not wise to #define cache. So they removed it. http://xrl.us/gqki Parrots Getting Smarter Leo pointed out that at least one parrot understood the concept of zero, putting it some distance ahead of romans when it comes to math. Once the Parrots start to grow opposable thumbs, I will welcome our new Parrot overlords. http://xrl.us/gqkj Leo's Branch Meets Exceptions Leo posted two suggestions for how the new calling conventions could interact with Exceptions. Autrijus liked the one that unifies exception handlers with the rest of calls and returns. http://xrl.us/gqkk Control Flow Graph Bugs Curtis Rawls noted what he thought might be a bug in the compute_dominators function. Leo confirmed that it was likely a bug. Later he posted a note saying he was working on a new implementation for some of the CFG algorithms. He asked for a hand, but Warnock applied. Actually, I think I have
Re: Summarizer Suggestion...
Will~ On 7/6/05, Will Coleda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It would be nice if the summarizers also summarized the various Planet RSS feeds of journal entries, if those entries were sufficiently relevant. I would be willing to do that, but I can't speak for Piers... Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: [perl #36437] [BUG] PGE recursion, bus error
All~
On 7/1/05, Luke Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Attempting to come up with a simplistic math grammar that has one possible
operand (A) and one possible operator (*) - so that things like A, A*A, and
A*A*A*A*A are all parsed. This simplistic example (thanks to spinclad on
#perl6) cause PGE to explode.
$ cat ta.p6r
grammar f;
rule atom { A }
rule binary { expr \* atom }
rule expr { binary }
That probably shouldn't die so horribly, but it should die. We don't
support left-recursive grammars, and this is one. A
non-left-recursive grammar that matches the same language is:
grammar f;
rule atom { A }
rule binary { atom \* binary }
Not to pick gnits or show off my ignorance too much, but shouldn't the
binary rule make the second part optional somehow?
rule binary { atom [\* binary]? }
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-???
Re: coroutines
Leo~ On 6/30/05, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Nice summary with examples: ftp://ftp.inf.puc-rio.br/pub/docs/techreports/04_15_moura.pdf and we still have to define semantics of parrot couroutines, e.g. WRT argument passing. See also Dan's blogs about couroutines, I prefer the option of repassing arguments to coroutines. It is slightly easier to emulate not repassing with repassing then vice versa. That and it just feels more powerful to me. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Parrot Segfault
Jens~ On 6/29/05, Jens Rieks [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: #13 0x0808588e in main (argc=1, argv=0xb8ac) at imcc/main.c:637 Can you please run print ((char**)0xb8ac)[1] to find out which file causes the coredump?? Sure! gdb ./parrot core snip/ Core was generated by `./parrot --gc-debug /home/mfowles/perl6/parrot/t/pmc/io_1.pir'. Program terminated with signal 6, Aborted. snip/ (gdb) print ((char**)0xb8ac)[0] $3 = 0xb9ee /home/mfowles/perl6/parrot/t/pmc/io_1.pir (gdb) print ((char**)0xb8ac)[1] $4 = 0x0 Hope that helps, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Perl 6 Summary for 2005-06-21 through 2005-06-28
Patrick~ On 6/29/05, Patrick R. Michaud [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Jun 28, 2005 at 08:11:24PM -0400, Matt Fowles wrote: Parrot Loses with Fedora Core 4 Patrick reported that Fedora Core 4 and Parrot don't get along well. Leo suggested a possible solution. No response from Patrick. An update: Patrick submitted a patch based on Leo's suggestion, Leo applied the patch, and now Fedora Core 4 (gcc 4.0) and Parrot seem to get along just fine. I guess I should've cc'ed my patch to the list...? It is generally my preferences to see things started on the list finished on the list. But then again, I am in a slightly odd position... Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Parrot Segfault
Leo~ On 6/29/05, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles wrote: Core was generated by `./parrot --gc-debug /home/mfowles/perl6/parrot/t/pmc/io_1.pir'. Ah. ok. That's a TODO tests that is supposed to fail. It is testing io opcodes with undefs and integer PMCs. As soon as the io opcodes are methods in ParrotIO we get type safety and appropriate error messages. Would it be reasonable to not run tests that are known to leave core files? I feel like after a successful build there should not be evidence like this left around... Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Parrot Segfault
All~
Although all tests pass, a core file is created during the test run.
Here is a little snippet from GDB. I am running a fairly stock Debian
Testing x86 (slightly out of date).
(gdb) list
1006INTVAL
1007PIO_putps(theINTERP, PMC *pmc, STRING *s)
1008{
1009ParrotIOLayer *l = PMC_struct_val(pmc);
1010ParrotIO *io = PMC_data0(pmc);
1011assert((unsigned int)l != 0xdeadbeefU);
1012assert(io != 0);
1013return PIO_write_down(interpreter, l, io, s);
1014}
1015
(gdb) p l
$1 = (ParrotIOLayer *) 0xdeadbeef
(gdb) bt
#0 0x4020e741 in kill () from /usr/lib/debug/libc.so.6
#1 0x40024771 in pthread_kill (thread=595, signo=0) at signals.c:65
#2 0x40024a7b in __pthread_raise (sig=1073917184) at signals.c:187
#3 0x4020e4d4 in *__GI_raise (sig=6) at
../linuxthreads/sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:34
#4 0x4020fa08 in *__GI_abort () at ../sysdeps/generic/abort.c:88
#5 0x40207b3f in *__GI___assert_fail (assertion=0x0, file=0x0,
line=0, function=0x8219864 PIO_putps) at assert.c:83
#6 0x08128193 in PIO_putps (interpreter=0x826e050, pmc=0x82a93e8,
s=0x843c7d8) at io/io.c:1011
#7 0x080e9c67 in Parrot_print_p_sc (cur_opcode=0x84d837c,
interpreter=0x826e050) at io.ops:308
#8 0x08158aa0 in runops_slow_core (interpreter=0x826e050,
pc=0x84d837c) at src/runops_cores.c:153
#9 0x08156f0d in runops_int (interpreter=0x826e050, offset=0) at
src/interpreter.c:750
#10 0x08157de5 in runops (interpreter=0x826e050, offs=0) at src/inter_run.c:81
#11 0x080c3031 in Parrot_runcode (interpreter=0x826e050, argc=1,
argv=0xb8ac) at src/embed.c:831
#12 0x080c2e72 in Parrot_runcode (interpreter=0x826e050, argc=1,
argv=0xb8ac) at src/embed.c:765
#13 0x0808588e in main (argc=1, argv=0xb8ac) at imcc/main.c:637
Thanks,
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-???
myconfig
Description: Binary data
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-06-21 through 2005-06-28
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-06-21 through 2005-06-28 All~ Long time no see... err, write... uh, read... um... this. Yeah, long time no this. As Piers hinted, two weeks ago I moved. Moving sucks. For those of you who care, I am still in Cambridge, for those of you who care more, I think you misunderstand the summarizer/summary reader relationship. Essentially it revolves around summaries, and the summary of my move is Cambridge to Cambridge. As Piers noted last week, this is a low volume high action week. In no small part do to the hack-a-thons. Last week's was in Austria, this week's is near Toronto. Perhaps some nice soul who was actually at these hack-a-thons will summarize it when it is over. Perl 6 Compiler Patrick announced that PGE now supports grammars and more built-in rules. He even offered to field requests for built-in rules (although he would prefer patches). http://xrl.us/gkev Caller's Context Gerd Pokorra wanted to know how to determine if his sub is called in void context. He conjectured that want might fill his wants. No response yet. http://xrl.us/gkew Self Hosting Goals Millsa Erlas explained that one good reason for Perl6 to be self hosting is that it would allow the people who love it most (Perl hackers) to hack on it. The theory being that low level languages like C unnecessarily narrow the field of contributors (especially those that only know perl). Some concerns were expressed over confusion about the language Ponie should be written in. No one disputes this... C. http://xrl.us/gkex Parrot Indexing Hashtables Klaas-Jan Stol asked for a clue bat with respect to indexing hash tables in PIR. Joshua Juran and Leo each took a swing. http://xrl.us/gkey Parrot Loses with Fedora Core 4 Patrick reported that Fedora Core 4 and Parrot don't get along well. Leo suggested a possible solution. No response from Patrick. http://xrl.us/gkez Default Method Resolution Order Roger Browne wondered what the default MRO order was. Leo provided the answer: left-to-right, depth-first, discard all but the last occurrence of duplicates, divine intervention. http://xrl.us/gke2 Win32 Tests Failing Craig the Last-Nameless-One posted a list of failing tests and problems on Windows. Leo provided a few answers. http://xrl.us/gke3 Method Inheritance Needs Perl Loving Leo announced a perl job for the interested: method inheritance in the PMC compiler. This naturally led to discussion of numerical hierarchies. I was a little disappointed the quaternions got mentioned, but Hamiltonian and Surreal Numbers were left out. Honestly, where are our priorities. http://xrl.us/gke4 Tracing and Debugging Pain Matt Diephouse posted a general description of the problems he was having with tracing, debugging, and GC. Warnock might apply in a day or two. http://xrl.us/gke5 Segmented Context and Register Memory Chip posted a partial reply to Leo's context and register overhaul patch. Andy Dougherty responded to some of Chip's finer points. If you are interested in the nuances of C's pointer pain, this thread makes an interesting read. http://xrl.us/gke6 Improving Parrot's Test Framework chromatic wants to improve parrots test framework by stealing ideas from Test::Class. He wants to know if anyone else is interested in this. http://xrl.us/gke7 setattribute Fails with Multi-level Inheritance Roger Browne opened a ticket describing an error with setattribute when several layers of inheritance are used. http://xrl.us/gke8 Register Allocation Bug Leo opened a ticket for a problem with improper control flow tracking. Bill Coffman wondered whether the new register design had been implemented yet. http://xrl.us/gke9 Pass by Value PMCs Klaas-Jan Stol mused that the new calling conventions could be leveraged to allow passing PMCs by value. http://xrl.us/gkfa Parrot Fall Down Go Boom Matt Fowles reported a segfaulting parrot that passes its tests. Sadly, no one solved his problem in the 4 hours between his posting it and writing the summary. http://xrl.us/gkfb Perl 6 Language You Know That, But You Go On As Piers noted, arguments about ./method vs .method continue. Like Piers, I don't like ./. I guess I was the only person who did like $^ as the invocant. Ah well, I guess I will just go on summarizing... http://xrl.us/gkfc Binding Functions Piers wanted to use a Ruby idiom involving rebinding functions. Damian told him that he could, but also pointed him to wrap . http://xrl.us/gkfd OO Questions BÁRTHÁZI András posted a question about method calls in Perl 6. Juerd and Piers provided answers. http://xrl.us/gkfe Autoload
Re: Attack of the fifty foot register allocator vs. the undead continuation monster
Chip~ On 6/12/05, Chip Salzenberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd like like to note for other readers and the p6i archives that Piers has failed to grasp the problem, so the solution seems pointless to him. I'm sorry that's the case, but I've already explained enough. This response worries me firstly because of its rudeness and second because of the problem itself. As I see it there are four possibilities a: 1) Chip is right, Piers is wrong. This is a complex problem and refusing to explain it means that others will doubtless also misunderstand it, which you have a chance to preempt here. 2) Chip is wrong, Piers is right. This is a complex problem and refusing discussion on it would be a costly mistake. 3) Chip is right, Piers is right. The two of you have are working from a different base set of definitions/axioms or misunderstood each other in some other way. 4) Chip is wrong, Piers is wrong. Shutting down open conversation so forcefully and caustically will prevent discussion in the future and this problem will continue to haunt parrot as no viable solution has been seen. Regardless of which of these possibilities is true. I see a need for more discussion of this issue. Preferably a discussion that does not degrade into backhanded insults. I have my own ideas about this problem, but I will save that for another response. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Regarding Google's Summer of Code 2005
All~ On 6/3/05, Curtis Rawls [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 6/3/05, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dheeraj Kumar Arora wrote: I m interseted in one of LLVM project Implement well-known optimizations in PIR compiler (SSA - register allocation) [ I have answerd this ] Parrot is a register based virtual machine with 32*4 registers. There are a lot of studies WRT optimizations and register allocations for compilers and hardware CPUs but probably all these things can be applied to Parrot too. See also imcc/cfg.c and imcc/reg_alloc.c for existing code. I'm not a computer scientist nor am I able to follow most of the papers regarding various optimization techniques or the needed infrastructure to implement it Anyway, there are folks on our mailing list like Curtis Rawls, who could probably better summarize what's needed and what should be done. Can Any send me the details? Yes please, folks. leo Wow, thanks for the link to the Summer of Code, that looks like fun! (I know I'll be thinking about my proposal all day at work : ). I don't have my TODO list with me, I will try to post it later today. I have been working and thinking about improvements to the Parrot/IMCC optimizer for a while now. Implementing SSA is definitely at the top of my list, because it simplifies a lot of optimizations and makes some others possible. The biggest challenge is to graft such a big change onto a working system, with small changes at a time. I know that Melvin Smith (aka Mr JoltCola) was planning on a full scale rewrite of imcc. His plan involved SSA. I don't know what came of that; I think that he ran out of tuits... But you might ask him where he is. I cc'ed him on this email... Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Register Allocation and Continuations problem definition
All~ On 6/3/05, Bill Coffman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are several threads in the parrot mailing list that discuss the continuations problem. I hoped to be able to address parrot register allocator again, at some point, but it could be a while before I get to that. In the mean time, search the perl6-internals mailing list for continuations and register allocation. I'm sure you'll find it. I would actually very much like to see this issue moved on. In the hopes of getting everything up to speed quickly I will try and summarize all of the discussions and suggestions that have been made. I am NOT trying to advocate any particular solution (yet), I just want to make sure that everyone is on the same page. I propose that we use this thread to ensure that we are not talking past each other. Discussions about specific solutions should and religion should have a seperate thread. PROBLEM: Continuations can be invoked repeatedly. Whenever a continuation is reinvoked, the registers must be in a defined state or the code will behave incorrectly. BASIC ANALYSIS The actual state of the registers does not matter as long as it is well defined. A) If the registers are defined to be garbage, then every continuation will start by returning them to the state it expects. B) If the registers are defined to be preserved, then every continuation merrily chugs along. Unfortunately these each have issues and as such much debate ensued. SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS 1) Context includes registers + continuations don't have to preserve specifc registers + register allocator can ignore continuations wrt spilling - copying overheard - value based registers (IN) return to old values - pointer based registers (SP) cannot have their pointers moved or require double indirection 2) Return Continuations include registers, non don't + register allocator can remain mostly ignorant + only non return continuations need to worry - promoting a return continuation will force copying as plan (1) 3) register are not restored + simple to explain - register allocator must add many extra interference edges - largely prevents reuse of register 4) variable sized register frames + never have unused registers + no need for a register allocator + could correspond directly to scratchpad - more complicated - no register reuse - large architectural change - more custom allocation (can't pool register sets) I believe the official spec calls for (2); however, I do not believe that it is currently implemented. Once again in this thread please try to remain objective and just summarize/correct. We can start a new thread to hash out the minutia of pro's/con's and new ideas, I just want everyone to be on the same page. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-05-24 through 2005-05-31
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-05-24 through 2005-05-31
All~
Welcome to another Perl 6 summary, brought to you by Aliya's new
friends, Masha Nannifer and Philippe, and my own secret running joke.
Without further ado, I bring you Perl 6 Compiler.
Perl 6 Compiler
method chaining
Alex Gutteridge discovered that he couldn't chain attribute access like
$bowl.fish.eyes.say; in Pugs. Later he provided his example in test
form (in case anyone wanted to add it). Maybe they were added to the
test suite, maybe not: Warnock applies.
http://xrl.us/f95k
Pugs link issues on Debian Sid
BÁRTHÁZI András was having trouble making Pugs work on Debian Sid with
perl 5 support. Autrijus provided helpful pointers. I assume from his
final silence that the final pointer worked.
http://xrl.us/f95m
Pugs.AST.* compilation
Samuel Bronson wanted to speed up the compilation of Pugs.AST.* modules
by turning off optimizations. Autrijus told him that this was a core
module that needed it speed, and optimizations would stay.
http://xrl.us/f95n
Pugs.Types export list
Samuel Bronson added an export list to Pugs.Types. Autrijus happily
applied it and send him a commit bit.
http://xrl.us/f95o
export withArgs from Main
Samuel Bronson added an export to Main. Samuel Bronson happily applied
it himself this time.
http://xrl.us/f95p
out-of-date hs-plugins
Vadim was having trouble compiling Pugs with Parrot support. Autrijus
helped him fix his problem, and there was much rejoicing.
http://xrl.us/f95q
chomp problem
Jens Rieks found a problem with chomp and submitted a test. Warnock
applies.
http://xrl.us/f95s
Pugs makefile issue
Grégoire Péan noticed that pugs was creating a useless Pugs.exe.bat.
Autrijus asked if he would be willing to investigate a patch. He
responded that he would put it in his queue.
http://xrl.us/f95t
loop or do
Gerd Pokorra wondered why do { ... } was in Pugs reasoning that
loop { ... } while was the correct thing. Luke Palmer explained that
do { ... } was part of the with or without a postfix while .
http://xrl.us/f95u
PxPerl 5.8.6.2 with Pugs 6.2.5 and Parrot 0.2.0
Grégoire Péan announced that the release of PxPerl 5.8.6.2 which
includes Pugs 6.2.5 and Parrot 0.2.0. This means that windows folk can
test Pugs and Parrot without having to fight with compilers.
http://xrl.us/f95v
BUILD errors
Carl Franks was confused by that handling of a named argument to a
constructor. He asked for confirmation but none was provided. Perhaps
this poor summary save him.
http://xrl.us/f95w
whitespace and function calls
David D Zuhn didn't know that whitespace between and function call and
its parentheses was forbidden. Carl told him that and about the .()
variant which allows whitespace.
http://xrl.us/f95x
Pug's make cean issues LONG commands
Carl Franks noticed that make clean issued a command so long that it
broke his nmake. Fortunately he had a really old nmake and updating
fixed the problem.
http://xrl.us/f95y
Parrot
thr_windows.h with MinGW
François Perrad provided a patch fixing two compilation problems in
thr_windows.h. Warnock applies.
http://xrl.us/f95z
Parrot Slides?
Adam Preble posted a request for slides and notes on Parrot and Perl 6
for a presentation he was working on. Many people provided links in
various languages. I usually steal from Dan's presentations when I need
something like this...
http://xrl.us/f952
Problems with Perl 5.6.1
François Perrad had a problem building Parrot with MinGW and Perl 5.6.1.
The problem was related to windows and its binary vs text distinction.
This problem will also crop up if you ever try to seek on files in
windows. Not that I have ever lost several days debugging that problem.
http://xrl.us/f953
ordered hash thoughts
Leo posted his thoughts on a modification to ordered hash as adding a
new element by index breaks the string hashing part of it. Dan suggested
that the ordered hash just pitch exceptions in the bad cases as it was
designed to be lightweight and fast.
http://xrl.us/f954
subrules tests
Dino Morelli provided a patch adding tests for subrules to PGE. Warnock
applies.
http://xrl.us/f955
python on parrot
Bloves inquired as to the state of python on parrot. The phrasing of the
question itself provided some confusion. Michal Wallace provided a link
to pirate, hoping it would help.
http://xrl.us/f956
Resizable*Array defeats list.c
Slowly but steadily my {Fixed,Resizable}typeArray PMCs are defeating
the less consistent array implementations. Leo offered the job of
slaying list.c to any interested partied. Jerry Gay expressed interest.
http://xrl.us/f957
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-05-03 through 2005-05-17
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-05-03 through 2005-05-17 All~ Welcome ot another fortnight's summary. Wouldn't it just figure that I can't think of anything sufficiently non-sequiterish to amuse myself. Perhaps I need a running gag like Leon Brocard or chromatic's cummingseque capitalization Maybe I should start one and not tell you. That could be fun. Sorry for spelling errors, gmails spell checker is busted for the moment. Perl 6 Compiler pugs commit emails If you have ever been foolish enough to want to get an email for every commit in Pugs, Sam Vilain created a way to help you sip from the firehose. Have fun. http://xrl.us/f5q7 given when nested Luke Palmer had a question about how nested when statements in a given block should act. His intuition disagreed with Pugs, but most others supported Pugs. http://xrl.us/f5q8 I don't need to walk around in circles Autrijus has made Pugs into a registered compiler for Parrot. Since Pugs already allowed you to embed parrot code (well pir anyway) directly into perl 6, this allows you to embed the perl 6 in your pir in your perl 6. Now the possibilities are endless, at least until you blow your mental stack. Those of you with tail call optimization in your mental stack may simply go into an infinite loop if you prefer. http://xrl.us/f5q9 xor on lists Trewth Seeker expressed his opinion about the proper definition of xor quite strongly. Unfortunately, his opinion is at odds with established mathematics, as Mark Biggar pointed out to him. http://xrl.us/f5ra PGE features update Patrick provided an update on the state of the Perl Grammar Engine. It has many nifty new features. http://xrl.us/f5rb Pugs on Cygwin Rob Kinyon and Gaal Yahas worked to improve Pugs support for Cygwin. Unfortunately the thread winds down with an unanswered question, fortunately Stevan clued me in on IRC that things are working just yet. http://xrl.us/f5rc Pugs gets some objects and some rules Autrijus announced that Pugs now has basic support for Objects and Rules. Sometimes he scares me. Usually he just makes me really want to learn haskell though. http://xrl.us/f5rd regression test Miroslav Silovic provided a regression test for hyper ops. Some people just don't appreciate the fun of regressing. http://xrl.us/f5re basic test for classes Stevan Little provided a patch for a simple object test. Autrijus applied it. Odd, cause I am pretty sure that Stevan has the commit bit... http://xrl.us/f5rf torturing PGE Juerd provided a link to a big rule that could segfault PGE. Kind reminds me of a homework assignment I had to create a regular expression which matched all strings of numbers that did not contain any repeated digits. Easy in perl, but hard in math. I think the resultant regex was somewhere around 17 MB. http://xrl.us/f5rg Pugs 6.2.3 with Live CD Autrijus released Pugs 6.2.3 which contains 10% more awesome then Pugs 6.2.2. You should check it out on the live CD that Ingo Blechschmidt released. http://xrl.us/f5rh -- release anouncement http://xrl.us/f5ri -- live CD PXPerl meets Pugs Grégoire Péan announced that he has added Pugs binaries to his windows distribution of Perl. Pretty cool. Autrijus innocently asked him to take on the slightly larger task of producing binaries of Parrot too, so that Pugs could be at its more powerful. http://xrl.us/f5rj Parrot Wow did you see how I mentioned Parrot before going into. That was like an awesome transition. My high school english teachers would be so proud... character classes Patrick wants character class opcodes of the form find first and find first not. Leo pointed him to some hysterical raisins who might help. http://xrl.us/f5rk PGE on MinGW François Perrad fixed a problem with building PGE on MinGW. Patrick applied the patch. http://xrl.us/f5rm PIO_fdopen return value Luke Palmer both intoduced me to the wonderfully cute phrase untodid and provided a patch making PIO_fdopen return NULL when give bad flags. Leo applied the patch, but Melvin Smith warned that this might be a bad idea. Silence after that. http://xrl.us/f5rn embedding initialization Jeff Horwitz was having trouble embedding PIR into C. Leo provided some pointers. Jeff was happy. http://xrl.us/f5ro Test::Builder updates Previously, Michael G Schwern announced an update to Test::Builder. chromatic asked if it was worth the upgrade. Michael replied probably, but I don't think anyone has acted on it. http://xrl.us/f5rp miniparrot Robert Spier created a miniparrot at Bernhard Schmalhofer request. This miniparrot does not replace our make system, but it does make our
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-04-26 through 2005-05-03
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-04-26 through 2005-05-03 All~ Welcome to another weeks summary. This week I shall endeavor not to accidentally delete my summary or destroy the world. So here we go with p6c. Perl 6 Compilers implicit $_ on for loops Kiran Kumar found a bug in pugs involving for loops which use $_ but don't iterate over it. Aaron Sherman and Luke Palmer confirmed the bug. No word as to its final status, but given the rate of development of pugs... http://xrl.us/fyof Pugs Darcs trouble Glenn Ehrlich noticed that pugs's darcs repository wasn't getting updated. Sam Vilain explained that occasionally a daemon needed to be kicked. http://xrl.us/fyog Memory Game v0.2 BÁRTHÁZI András announced the release of the latest version of Memory. He also put out a call for 85x75 pixel photos for the next version. http://xrl.us/fyoh Haddock for Pugs Stuart Cook decided that the easiest way for him to understand Pugs internals was to provide better documentation. To that end he started working with haddock to automatically generate cross linked documentation for pugs. He even met with some success. http://xrl.us/fyoi /haskell.org/haddock/ in http: is export trait Garrett Rooney wondered why the is export trait appeared to do nothing in Pugs. Stevan Little explained that it was just a place holder which, while it parses, does nothing semantically yet. http://xrl.us/fyoj Pugs 6.2.2 Autrijus proudly announced the release of Pugs 6.2.2. It features a great many changes. High on that list is a great number of speed ups and thread safe, dead lock free internal storage. http://xrl.us/fyok Pugs on Cygwin Rob Kinyon noticed that Pugs was having trouble on Cygwin. He has made some headway rectifying the situation, although work remains. http://xrl.us/fyom Pugs TODO model Stevan has put some more thought into the TODO model for Pugs. His latest suggestion, annotating todo tests with a flag indicating why they are not passing, seems a little less hackish then the last one and received general support. http://xrl.us/fyon Parrot hiding inside Pugs Autrijus wanted to embed the newly released PGE. PGE is written in PIR which runs on Parrot. So, Autrijus decided to embed Parrot into Pugs. He also posted an interesting link to JHC as a possible bootstrap solution. http://xrl.us/fyoo /repetae.net/john/computer/jhc/jhc.html in http: new PGE released Maybe I should have mentioned this first... Patrick R. Michaud released a new version of the Parrot Grammar Engine. It is written entirely in PIR and generates PIR code. It has many features but not enough tests... cough hint /cough http://xrl.us/fyop Parrot Monthly Release? Jared Rhine wondered the monthly releases included April. Chip announced that April's release would be slushier then most, but would start on the fourth. http://xrl.us/fyoq http://xrl.us/fyor t/op/debuginfo.t failure François Perrad noticed a failure in with debuginfo. Leo pointed out that it was an issue of flushing output handles. Francois provided a patch (well actually two). Warnock applies to the second. http://xrl.us/fyos ParTcl Happy? Will Coleda thought that ParTcl's GC bugs were finally fixed. Leo burst his bubble. Apparently these GC bugs can disappear and reappear according to sun spot activity. http://xrl.us/fyot segfault in load_bytecode Nick Glencross submitted a patch fixing a segfault in load_bytecode. Jens pointed out that it should use real_exception instead of internal_exception. chromatic offered to write the test. No official committed message though... http://xrl.us/fyou large PackFile tinker Leo implemented a change in the interpreter PackFile structure which has been under discussion for a long time. Unfortunately, it has the potential to break a lot of JIT stuff. Tests and fixes would be greatly appreciated. http://xrl.us/fyov PMC inheritance issue Nicholas Clark was having some trouble with his Perl5 PMCs. Later he posted a mea culpa email, but Leo provided some useful pointers anyway. http://xrl.us/fyow RT cleanup Bernhard Schmalhofer cleaned out an old ticket from RT. http://xrl.us/fyox RFC assign Px, Py Some time ago, Leo requested comments on the semantics of assign. Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon tried to de-Warnock the thread with his support. He also suggested a clone operator. http://xrl.us/fyoy NULL in real_exception Nicholas Clark was getting bitten by a NULL pointer deref in real_exception. Leo pointed him toward the correct approach. http://xrl.us/fyoz unary operator overhaul Having finished overhauling the infix operators, Leo set to work
Re: disassemble segfaults
Bob~ On 5/3/05, Bob Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: . . . but I can't figure out why. I thought the patch below would help, but it appears that the value of c is itself broken somehow. . . . This GDB was configured as i586-suse-linux... (gdb) r runtime/parrot/library/config.pbc Starting program: /usr/src/parrot/disassemble runtime/parrot/library/config.pbc [New Thread 16384 (LWP 24464)] [New Thread 32769 (LWP 24466)] [New Thread 16386 (LWP 24467)] [New Thread 32771 (LWP 24468)] Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. [Switching to Thread 16384 (LWP 24464)] 0x08083966 in Parrot_disassemble (interpreter=0x8253d00) at src/embed.c:880 (gdb) bt #0 0x08083966 in Parrot_disassemble (interpreter=0x8253d00) at src/embed.c:880 #1 0x08082871 in do_dis (interpreter=0x8253d00) at src/disassemble.c:99 #2 0x0808283f in main (argc=2, argv=0xb554) at src/disassemble.c:79 (gdb) I find disassemble useful, but it seems subject to periodic bit rot. So, I think I would like to write some basic tests for it. Is it worth extending Parrot::Test to include disassemble_output_is, etc., or should I do something more special-purpose? -- Bob Rogers http://rgrjr.dyndns.org/ Index: embed.c === --- embed.c (revision 7955) +++ embed.c (working copy) @@ -877,7 +877,7 @@ if (line-label) PIO_printf(interpreter, L%li:\t, line-label-number); c = pdb-file-source + line-source_offset; -while (*c != '\n' c) +while (*c *c != '\n') PIO_printf(interpreter, %c, *(c++)); PIO_printf(interpreter, \n); line = line-next; Not knowing any of the surrounding code, shouldn't that be while (c *c != '\n') Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Alpha development box?
All~ I am near boston so worst case senario I can take it. But I would prefer not to if another option is there. Matt On 4/25/05, Bob Rogers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Nicholas Clark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 10:37:07 +0100 On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 09:46:03PM -0400, Bob Rogers wrote: available; if the money were forthcoming, it could even run Tru64. Is the Parrot project interested in using such a box? If so, under what OS? And where/how should such a box be hosted/administered? Quite possibly, although I personally wouldn't be one of the people actually involved in getting something a new home. Which country is the box currently in? Nicholas Clark It's in Boston, Massachusetts. It's located in a university research center (quite a Perl-friendly one, BTW), and the admin team says they would consider hosting and/or administering the box on their network, depending on how much access is required. -- Bob -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-04-12 through 2005-04-19
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-04-12 through 2005-04-19 All~ Sadly, a slip of the mouse cause me to delete a partially completed summary, so I am going to push ahead on the rewrite without a witty intro. Feel free to make one up for yourself involving stuffed animals, musicians, and dinner. Perl 6 Compilers Pugs 6.2.0 Autrijus release Pugs 6.2.0 marking the first major milestone for Pugs. This includes most of the control flow primitives of Perl 6 and is a testament to the solid work that all of the lambdacamels have been putting in. http://xrl.us/ftoo CGI.pm and multi byte characters BÁRTHÁZI András was having trouble encoding and decoding multi byte characters in CGI.pm. This led to a general discussion of how to escape such characters in URLs as well as when to call chr . http://xrl.us/ftop -- discussion http://xrl.us/ftoq -- more discussion auto currying? Matthew D Swank wondered if he really needed an extra set of parens to simultaneously call a function generator and its generated function. Autrijus told him that yes he did as Perl 6 is not quite Haskell yet. http://xrl.us/ftor case insensitive P5 regex BÁRTHÁZI András wanted to use the :i switch on P5 regexes. Autrijus implemented it, but Larry noticed that this introduced a flag ordering dependency. As a result the new way to supply flags to a perl 5 regex is rx:P5imsxg/.../ . http://xrl.us/ftos Cookbook Ettiquette Marcus Adair wondered if there were rules of etiquette he should obey when writing examples for the Perl 6 Cookbook. In particular, should examples run and be only one file. Ovid suggested that one file was a good idea, but was open to contrary arguments. http://xrl.us/ftot Austrian Parrot/Pugs Hackathon Thomas Klausner announced that on June 9-10 in Vienna Austria there would be a Hackathon featuring the collective might of Autrijus, Chip, Leo, and more. When that much brain power gets together only two things can happen: much hacking and much drinking. http://xrl.us/ftou encoding illegal byte sequences in strings BÁRTHÁZI András wanted to know if he could encode an illegal byte sequence in a string. Much discussion ensued, but Larry promised that it would be possible. http://xrl.us/ftov Test::TAP Yuval Kogman announced the release of two new modules to CPAN which provid Pugs smoke html. http://xrl.us/ftow -- announcement http://xrl.us/ftox -- smoke em if you got em quoting constructs Roie Marianer noticed that pugs was missing some quoting constructs and implemented them. This led to discussion of interoplation and corners cases. As usual Larry provided both answers and questions. Roie produced a patch which Autrijus applied. http://xrl.us/ftoy -- discussion http://xrl.us/ftoz -- useful pugs hacking pointer http://xrl.us/fto2 -- the patch Code Block as Argument Stevan Little found some bugs with passing a code block to a function in pugs. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/fto3 Push, Pop, Shift, and Unshift on Infinite Lists Stevan Little has been playing with push, pop, shift, and unshift on infinite lists. He thinks he has found a bug, although maybe he just hasn't let it run long enough... Larry provided answers as to the correct semantics. http://xrl.us/fto4 -- shift unshift http://xrl.us/fto5 -- push pop 'cd' issue in Makefile Jonathan Worthington noticed a Win32 issue in the Makefile. He can point to the offending line in the autogenerated makefile, but that is not where it should be fixed. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/fto6 hyperoperator tests David Christensen provided a patch for hyperoperators. Unfortunately, character set transcodings ate his patch. http://xrl.us/fto7 shift oddity Stevan Little noticed that shift did not act like pop. Larry noted that the example were not semantically valid, but even so Pugs should not freeze. http://xrl.us/fto8 Pugs SEGV Aaron Sherman managed to make Pugs segfault. Autrijus thinks it might already be fixed. http://xrl.us/fto9 Parrot Dynamic Perl 2 William Coleda provide the second of his patched to move Perl*PMC out of the core. Leo applied it. http://xrl.us/ftpa SVN revision in bug reports jreiks (Jens?) reported a difficult to reproduce bug. This caused Leo to pine for having the SVN revision in the bug report. Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon commented that this was a good idea. Jens Rieks offered to implement it. http://xrl.us/ftpb Win32 SDL Jerry Gay tried to get SDL working on Windows. There was some give and take, but in the end he got his wish. http://xrl.us/ftpc -l/path/to/icu Andy Dougherty provided a patch making Configure.pl provide a link flag to ICU
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-22 through 2005-04-05
Perl 6 Language ceil and floor Ingo Blechschmidt wondered if ceil and floor would be in the core. Warnock applies... Although Unicode operators would let me define circumfix \lfloor \rfloor (although I only know how to make those symbols in tex...). Hmmm... using tex to right Perl 6 code... interesting idea... at least then I could figure out how to make all the special symbols. Maybe someone should make a package for that. http://xrl.us/foe7 s/// object? Stevan Little wanted to know if s/// could return some sort of magic object that could be poked or prodded. Larry explain, no. http://xrl.us/foe8 markup like features Michele Dondi asked if perl 6 would have markup like features in it. Luke Palmer asked for a more full explanation of what was meant. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/foe9 the many moods of does Thomas Sandlaß wondered if S14 would actually be written or if tie/bless were eaten by does, enumerating the many powers of does. Larry explained that does will probably have mutated bless and then explained the contexts under which does does each of its powers. http://xrl.us/fofa the many moods of does To follow up his question about does, Thomas Sandlaß wondered about is (specifically whether it stubbed or initialized its variable). Larry explained that is would probably initiliaze its variable and explained how one could use is Ref to stub but not initiliaze something. http://xrl.us/fofb perl5 - perl6 converter Adam Kennedy dropped a line to the list about PPI 0.903, which could form a good base for a Perl 5 to Perl 6 convert. Larry explained that he was actually using PPD (the actual Perl parser) to construct such a tool. He also explained his approach on how he was going to do it. Actually it is a really cool approach for those of you who like elegant design approaches, you should check it out. I'll give you a hint, it starts by writing a glorified version of cat. http://xrl.us/fofc p5 library compatibility? Andrew Savige wondered if p6 would maintain the interface for most p5 libraries. chromatic almost died of fright from the suggestion. Juerd suggested a deprecated namespace for such things. Larry gave him a ponie instead. Later Larry thought that perhaps a special namespace for those libraries that could be automatically converted might be appropriate. http://xrl.us/fofd http://xrl.us/foff -- later importing constants and header files Song10 wondered if there was an easy way to import constants from a module and not have to specify their full scope in the includers file. Larry explained that p6 would have policy modules which would allow this. He then began to let his mind explore the possibility of allowing these modules to return a string to evaluate in the user's scope. Then he realized how nasty textual inclusion was in C and C++, and figured that a hygenic policy would be better. http://xrl.us/fofg giving lists more operators Juerd constructed a table of string, integer, and list operators. He noticed that list had blank spots where string and integer both had things. He then suggested quite a few more operators to fill these blanks... This morphed into a discussion of code complexity and reading code. http://xrl.us/fofh -- operators http://xrl.us/fofi -- complexity string pain Chip wondered what exactly set str apart from Str and the impact this had on Unicode support. Larry and Rod Adams explained that str specified a raw bytes view of strings and required explicit casts between different Unicode levels. http://xrl.us/fofj xx on CodeRefs Luke Palmer wondered if the xx operator could be overloaded to repeatedly run a coderef and slap the results together. Other liked it, but no word from on high. http://xrl.us/fofk running pugs Adam Preble had some strange problems with Pugs's make install target. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/fofm maniplulation many dimensional hashes Zhuang Li wanted to know how to manipulated hashes of unkown dimension. Luke Palmer provided the answer. http://xrl.us/fofn Semantics of Currying Yuval Kogman has been implementing currying in PUGS. As such, he has found some of the corner cases that have not been well specified. Thus he, Larry, Luke Palmer, and Thomas Sandlaß delve into these mysteries. http://xrl.us/fofo multi paradigmatic perl 6 Someone named Eddie posted a fairly long message to p6l on the google groups interface suggesting that Perl 6 support delegation and other programming paradigms. Sadly, no one told him that it already does both of those things, because nobody got his email. Google groups does not send messages back to the list. http://xrl.us/fofp
Re: other language compiler to parrot?
All~ On Apr 2, 2005 3:53 PM, William Coleda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as I know, no one is working on these at the moment. Volunteers welcome, of course. ^_^ [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hi,all have a Php compiler to parrot project? have a ruby compiler to parrot project? There is a ruby project, although I think it is dead, called cardinal. http://rubyforge.org/projects/cardinal/ Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: [PROPOSAL] infix MMD operators
Leo~
On Mon, 28 Mar 2005 12:22:29 +0200, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
5) infix method signature change:
METHOD PMC* add( [INTERP, SELF,] PMC* rhs, PMC ´*dest) {
if (!dest)
dest = pmc_new(INTERP, SELF-vtable-base_type);
...
return dest;
}
If the destination PMC is passed in, it's used else a new PMC of an
appropriate type is created.
The same scheme should of course be introduced with all the unary prefix
and postfix operators:
METHOD PMC* absolute( [INTERP, SELF,] PMC ´*dest) {
if (PMC_IS_NULL(dest))
dest = pmc_new(INTERP, SELF-vtable-base_type);
VTABLE_set_integer_native(INTERP, dest, abs(PMC_int_val(SELF)));
return dest;
}
and
op abs(out PMC, in PMC)
op n_abs(out PMC, in PMC)
Why bother with the IS_NULL check if we have the n_ variant already?
Why not have one option unconditionally use the destination pmc and
the other unconditionally create a new destination pmc?
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-???
Re: [PROPOSAL] infix MMD operators
Leo~
On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 16:37:41 +0200, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
5) infix method signature change:
METHOD PMC* add( [INTERP, SELF,] PMC* rhs, PMC ´*dest) {
if (!dest)
dest = pmc_new(INTERP, SELF-vtable-base_type);
...
return dest;
}
If the destination PMC is passed in, it's used else a new PMC of an
appropriate type is created.
I would actually appreciate a refresher on the original motivation
behind never autogenerating a LHS. I recall being told it has
something to do with tied data, but I was never clear on exactly how
that related. I would think that tied data would only require
VTABLE_assign method, and would not care how its RHS was created (via
an add or mul or whatever).
Thus I would argue for having most operators create their result (but
having a special assign that would call a VTABLE method) and forcing
languages with active data to go through a two step assignment
$P0 = $P1 + $P2 # P0 created
$P3 - $P0 # P3 gets to run its tied code
and languages like python which have immutable scalars could always use
$P0 = $P1 + $P2 # P0 created
One concern that occurs to me is that this would cause more new PMC
allocations. But I am whether or not that is true.
7) separate inplace methods
Opcodes like:
d += r# add d, r
are currently using the normal add method with the destination set to
SELF. This is suboptimal, especially, when the destination PMC is
morphed to a different type (e.g. due to bigint promotion) which
destroys the value of SELF.
It's just cleaner to have distinct inplace methods, it's very likely
also needed anyway, as method overloading would not work if the inplace
operations are the same.
Therefore we have:
infix __i_add, d, r
and in *.pmc
METHOD void i_add( [INTERP, SELF, ] PMC* r) {...}
I think this one is very necessary.
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-???
Re: [perl #34548] [TODO] Replace classes/pmc2c.pl with classes/pmc2c2.pl
All~ On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:19:09 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Bernhard Schmalhofer via RT [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [mdiep - Di 22. Mär 2005, 14:35:02]: pmc2c2.pl is the new pmc2c.pl. Both currently exist in Parrot CVS. Either pmc2c.pl should be deleted or pmc2c2.pl should be renamed to pmc2c.pl. A better location might be 'build_tools/pmc2c.pl Yep. Should we wait for that, until it is decided whether we will switch to SVN? I think that SVN preserves change history for moved files. That's the question. Are we switching to SVN? I vote yes. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-07 through 2005-03-22
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-03-07 through 2005-03-22
All~
Welcome to yet another fortnights summary. I believe this is the highest
volume I have ever seen the three lists at simultaneously. Hopefully
they will keep it up, because good work is being done. To aid in the
epic endeavour of summarizing all this, I have had to add some new Jazz
to my playlist. We will see how it works out. If it doesn't work well,
blame Seton.
Perl 6 Language
the actual name of ?SUB
David Storrs wanted to know how he could get the name of ?SUB. Larry
told him that $?SUBNAME would be the most reliable way to get the short
name.
http://xrl.us/fiip
Unlimited Argument Patterns
Luke Palmer has tasted the forbidden fruit of Haskell and now he wants
more of it in Perl 6. In particular he wants even more powerful pattern
matching of arguments for MMD. Rod Adams speculated that Larry had
decided Perl 6 would not be ML... In the end no real consensus, but
don't hold your breath seems to be the feeling.
http://xrl.us/fiiq
Limited Argument Patterns
Wolverian was a little unsure of what exactly sub foo(0) {...}
meant. Larry explained that it was just sugar for sub foo ( $bar of
Int where { $_ == 0 } $bar ) { ... } .
http://xrl.us/fiir
List Constructors
Wolverian made a list of list constructors, asking what each did. Larry
explained: For the most part, the same thing as perl 5, a few would
produce a warning.
http://xrl.us/fiis
Decorating Primitives
The question arose of how decorating objects with roles interacted with
low level types. Larry came to the conclusion that it was OK, unless you
wanted to decorate a single element in a primitive array.
http://xrl.us/fiit
splat operator in assignment
Juerd was unsure how splats and list assignment interacted. The answer
is that list assignment is exactly the same as Perl 5 to allow for
extending return list.
http://xrl.us/fiiu
Logic Programming
Rod Adams pointed out that much of logic programming could be
implemented using the rules engine. Unfortunately, the syntax gets a
little hairy and cumbersome. Larry said that this particular goal might
be something that is not addressed immediately in 6.0, but possibly
differed instead. Ovid rumbled about porting a Warren Abstract Machine
to Parrot... I would like it.
http://xrl.us/fiiv
Locale-KeyedText
Darren Duncan finished up the first non-core Perl 6 module. Being
properly hubristic, he asked for a critique. His questions touched on
subjects including subtypes, module loading, and strictness...
http://xrl.us/fiiw -- critique request
http://xrl.us/fiiy -- misc questions
bar $f =?= $f.bar
Rod Adams wondered what would happen if he had both a sub and a method
name bar. What would $f.bar and bar $f do? Jonathan Scott Duff
explained that $f.bar would call the method while bar $f would
call the sub.
http://xrl.us/fiiz
MMD object
Rod Adams wants a single object to represent all of the possible multi
methods associated with a particular short name. It seems that Rod
dranks some of the lisp cool-aid (although in this case, I agree). He
explained how this allowed the dispatch scheme to be changed on a multi
by multi basis and also allowed for nice introspection. This led to a
discussion of how this would work with lexically installed multi
methods, and if this would trip people up. No real consensus seemed to
appear...
http://xrl.us/fii2
:fooo != :foo('o'); :fooo == :foo{'o'}
Juerd wondered what the implications of a mapping to ('a') were. Larry
replied that it did not map in that manner.
http://xrl.us/fii3
lazy loading of object
Yuval Kogman wondered how he could get his objects to load lazily. Larry
told him that delegation would probably be the best bet.
http://xrl.us/fii4
throwing from higher up the call stack
Thomas Yandell wants a way to throw from further down the call stack.
Sadly he was warnocked.
http://xrl.us/fii5
sprintf
Juerd wants an sprintf like function f/FORMAT/EXPR/ . Larry seems to
think that EXPR.as(FORMAT) will suffice, especially if as is a list
op.
http://xrl.us/fii6
S29, builtin function
Rod Adams has been hard at work creating a list of build in functions.
He has a version up at /www.rodadams.net/Perl/S29.html in http:. This
led to good discussions about what things had alternate forms and what
did not.
http://xrl.us/fii7 -- discussion
http://xrl.us/fii8 -- more discussion
python to eliminate reduce()
Aristotle Pagaltzis posted a link explaining why reduce will be
eliminated in Python 3000. This led to a brief discussion of various
design philosophies.
http://xrl.us/fii9
SEND + MORE = JUNCTIONS
Sam Vilain fixed up
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-02-22 though 2005-03-07
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-02-22 though 2005-03-07 All~ Welcome to yet another fortnight summary. Once again brought to you by chocolate chips. This does have the distinction of being the first summary written on a mac. So if I break into random swear words, just bear with me. Off list development In more related news, It has been pointed out to me that development goes on off list on places like IRC. I briefly contemplated, quitting my job and tracking such things full time, but then I decided that it would be better if I just accepted brief submissions for the summary. Thus I will be adding a fourth section to the summaries based on contributions. If you would like to make a contribution, email me with a brief summary. Please include the name by which you would like to be attributed (sadly the process I use is likely to mangle any unicode characters). Please make all links full, I will shorten them. Thanks Perl 6 Language not() It turns out that not() (with no arguments) made perl 5 core dump for a while, and it took us five years to figure that out. In perl 6 it will be a list op and calling it with no arguments will return a null list or an undef depending on context. http://xrl.us/fdb9 junctions and threading I had hoped that last week the concerns about threading would have been addressed. I was mistaken. A new crop of concerns surfaced and died down fairly quickly (as the chief proponent, Damien, was away). http://xrl.us/fdca serializing to various languages Somehow the discussion of junctions morphed into a discussion of sets, which morphed back into junctions, which morphed into a discussion of serialization to different languages. Interesting stuff, but I wouldn't hold me breath for it... http://xrl.us/fdcb Performance Analysis and Benchmarks Adam Preble posted an offer to develop some benchmarks for perl 6. Unfortunately, I think he posted it to google groups. Also, he probably should have posted it to p6c or p6i as the language folk tend to wave their hands and say magic occurs but correctness is preserved when it comes to optimization. http://xrl.us/fdcc send + more = junctions Autrijus posted an example using junctions, instead of parents, to solve the classic SEND MORE + = MONEY problem. Markus Laire asked for a clarification, and Rod Adams pointed out that he felt that it would not work as the interdependence of the es was not captured. This does lead to the question of how one should right prolog like code (including unification and backtracking) in Perl 6. No answers were offered. http://xrl.us/fdcd Pairs as lvalues Ingo Blechschmidt wondered what the behavior of pairs as lvalues would be. The answer is that you would get an error for attempting to modify a constant. http://xrl.us/fdce Perl 6 Roberto Bisotto wanted to know where he could download perl 6 to start playing with it. We embarrassedly told him that a full implementation was not yet available, but pugs was gaining ground quickly. http://xrl.us/fdcf hash keys Autrijus wanted to know if hash keys were still just strings or if they could be more. The answer is that by default they would be strings, but they could be declared as having a different shape . This led to a discussion of hashing techniques such as the .bits, .canonicalize, or .hash methods. http://xrl.us/fdcg Dynamically scoped dynamic scopes Dave Whipp wanted to make dynamically scoped dynamic scopes. My head hurt, but apparently Larry's didn't as he replied piece of cake, the syntax [and implementation] are left as an exercise to for the would be module author. http://xrl.us/fdch Parameters to rules Rod Adams asked how he could specify arguments to rules so they could be more function like. Larry explained that there were several syntaxes each of which would coerce its arguments in slightly different ways. He then mused that perhaps there were too many, I agree there are too many. http://xrl.us/fdci compile time signature checking Ahbijit Mahabal wondered how type checking would work for cases where it was not easy to determine the types at compile time. The answer: checking will be defered to runtime. In the end it seems that Perl 6 will blur the line between runtime and compile time heavily. Perhaps it will provide nifty support for staged programming, meta-perl6 here we come... http://xrl.us/fdcj %*CONFIG and %?CONFIG Brian Ingerson asked about the CONFIG hash and what sort of secondary sigil it would have. Larry explained that $?CONFIG held to config for the machine compiling the program and $*CONFIG held the config for the machine running the program. Then he made some noice about parsing,
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-02-08 through 2005-02-22
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-02-08 through 2005-02-22
All~
Welcome to yet another fortnight summary. Lately p6l has been out
stripping p6i in volume. While this used to be the norm, lately it has
become a rare occurrence. Strange... Anyway, this summary would be
brought to you buy cookies, but I ate them all. So instead this summary
is brought to you by the remaining chocolate chips. In other news,
Autrijus Tang has just officially been promoted to first name only
status in the summaries based on both his stellar work with Pugs and his
highly identifiable name. He now joins the ranks of Larry, Dan, Madonna,
and Leo.
Perl 6 Language
do { } while?
David Storrs wanted to know what the best way to say do { }
while($foo); was. Larry told him that s/do/loop/ would suffice.
http://xrl.us/e77k
nest as a primitive looping operation
Timothy Nelson gets credit for resurrecting the oldest thread I have
seen brought back recently. Over two years ago, he mentioned a powerful
looping structure that allowed for recursion. Now he has found a use for
it.
http://xrl.us/e77m
Loop Entry
Joe Gottman wanted to execute a closure every time a loop was entered,
not upon every iteration. He thought ENTER happened only once ever, but
it turns out that it will do what he wants.
http://xrl.us/e77n
pop %hash
Rod Adams wants to be able to pop a key value pair our of a hash. Others
wondered what it would be used for. Someone mentioned an OrderedHash...
http://xrl.us/e77o
higher order operators
Timothy Nelson wanted to have meta-operators. Larry gave him the full
unicode character set with which to define them. Tim was happy.
http://xrl.us/e77p
none and nor delimiter
Thomas Sandlaß suggests using \ as a none junction delimiter. He
then extended this idea to provide a logical nor, \\ . Autrijus
suggested ! for none. There was some argument about whether nor
deserved such huffmanization. Also, I think that the difference between
// and \\ would continually escape me. I have enough troubles
writing code to deal with windows filesystems.
http://xrl.us/e77q
Kudos to Autrijus
Damian proudly welcomed Autrijus to the ranks of the last-nameless-ones.
He also lauded his amazing work at forcing a lazy language to pull a
lazier one. I think we all agree.
http://xrl.us/e77r
containers vs object references
Rod Adams wondered whether there was a litmus test that could determine
if something deserved its own sigil. The answer appears to be mostly
history. Larry suggested a simplistic way to create new sigils, although
it would not provide interoplation. I think a blessed method for
defining new sigils which do interpolate and provide some sort of type
constraint and context would be really nifty. Also I want a million
dollars in small, non-consecutive, unmarked bills. If you have either of
these please mail it to me.
http://xrl.us/e77s
printing true
Autrijus wondered about true and fasle. Are they just 1 and 0? #t and
#f? Larry answered bool::true and bool::false, but true and false would
suffice when there was no ambiguity.
http://xrl.us/e77t
quoted = LHS
Juerd wondered if = auto-quoted its left hand side. Yes.
http://xrl.us/e77u
@ x 75 ~ $zap =?= (@ x 75) ~ $zap
Juerd mistakenly thought that ~ bound tighter than x. Only unary ~ binds
that tightly, so he is safe.
http://xrl.us/e77v
getting the key|value of a pair
Steve Peters wondered how he could get the key or value from a pair. It
turns out that the .key and .value method will do what he wants until
some twisted soul overrides them...
http://xrl.us/e77w
Junctiuons and Autothreading
By far the longest topic this week was junctions. Some people worry that
their autothreaded behavior will cause plagues to ravage the earth and
novices programmers to go blind. Others feel that without it Perl6 will
be a language suitable only to pond scum and cobol programmers. While
one side believes that autothreading repition of sid effects will crash
any database that interacts with Perl6, the other side believes that
requiring extra pragmas to unlock their full power will prevent
junctions from curing cancer. Either way someone is going to be unhappy.
It looked like the pendulum was swinging towards autothreading, but its
chief proponenet will be away next week, so who knows if it can survive
undefended. My favorite suggestion in all of this was to make Perl6 a
pure functional language and introduce monads.
http://xrl.us/e77x
http://xrl.us/e77y
http://xrl.us/e77z
http://xrl.us/e772
nullary vs nonslurpy
Autrijus found it distressing that to get his quicksort to sort quickly
he had to make an empty signature slurpy. Larry
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-01-31 through 2004-02-8
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-01-31 through 2004-02-8 All~ Welcome to yet another summary in which I will undoubtedly confuse to homophones. Probably more than a few this week as I am a little tired. But perhaps the alien on my window or the vampire on my monitor will help straighten it all out. Perl 6 Language autothreading generalization Luke Palmer's thread about auto-threading seems to have wound down without much resolution, or at the very least without a syntax that I like. http://xrl.us/e26z Featherweight Perl6 Autrijus Tang introduced Featherweight Perl6, a side-effect-free subset of Perl6. FP6 is the first step on a journey for Pugs to conquer the world. http://xrl.us/e262 Value Types vs Implementation Types Autrijus Tang in his work on FP6 became confused by types. He asked some questions about Types on perl 6 language and was apparently told to go to perl 6 compilers. From perl 6 compilers, he was told he should really be on perl 6 language. Sorry for the run around, the proper place for questions about language semantics is perl 6 language as he originally posted. Eventually all of that was settled and he even got his question answered. http://xrl.us/e263 -- original post http://xrl.us/e264 -- retry with less compiler speak Logic Programming in Perl 6 Ovid asked what logic programming in perl 6 would look like. No answer yet, but I suppose I can pick the low hanging fruit: as a limiting case you could always back out the entire perl 6 grammar and insert that of prolog. http://xrl.us/e265 the leaning tower of numbers Autrijus Tang asked what sort of number tower Perl6 had. He was planning (and implemented) that of Scheme until he gets an answer. http://xrl.us/e266 some quick questions Autrijus Tang asked a few questions about operators in specific contexts. He got a few answers, although I don't think he got them all. http://xrl.us/e267 getopt::signature Juerd wants to be able to give his script a general signature which magically parses command line arguments. Many people thought it was a cool idea that should be provided as a module rather than in the core. This led to talk about creating a signature object which could be passed to this module so that it doesn't need macros. Sounds good to me. http://xrl.us/e268 S03 inconsistency Juerd found a knit to pick. No comment about whether to pick the first or second option though... http://xrl.us/e269 regex precedence Nicholas Clark wondered about adding a little operator precedence to regexes so that people could avoid a few common problems. Sounds like a good idea to me... http://xrl.us/e27a pipe dreams Juerd wondered if he could mix = and == in a sane way. The answer appears to be no. Once you bring in == you should stick with it. http://xrl.us/e27b 4 $x 2 == true?!? Autrijus Tang wondered how junctions and chained comparators worked. He found that under certain semantics, one can receive very troubling answers. Larry agreed with Autrijus that the unintuitive semantics should be avoided. http://xrl.us/e27c Perl 6 Compilers Pugs 6.0.0 Autrijus Tang released Pugs 6.0.0. It has many cool features and was created in only 6 days. A testament to the power of Haskel or the caffeine intake of Autrijus. (Although to be fair he skipped more version numbers then Java did in its jump to 5.0...) http://xrl.us/e27d -- anouncement http://autrijus.org/pugs/ -- pugs website http://use.perl.org/~autrijus/journal/ -- implementation journal Parrot gdbmhash warning Bernhard Schmalhofer fix a problem where gdbmhash could make configure produce a warning. Leo applied it. http://xrl.us/e27e PyNCI Sam and Leo worked out the correct way to create NCI methods for Python. Leo ended by proposing a table to assist Parrot based on the current language, no answer to that idea... http://xrl.us/e27f makefile cleanup Bernhard Schmalhofer cleaned up some of the makefiles and configure system. Leo applied the patch. http://xrl.us/e27g ParrotIOLayer* const or not François Perrad provided a patch making the ParrotIOLayer* const in the API. Leo applied it, but Melvin warned that while this may be safe now, the API intended to allow mutability. I think for the moment it is still in though... http://xrl.us/e27h Win32 Parrot Ron Blaschke helped Parrot back onto its feet in the windows world. http://xrl.us/e27i http://xrl.us/e27j http://xrl.us/e27k http://xrl.us/e27m http://xrl.us/e27n http://xrl.us/e27o http://xrl.us/e27p -- latest results Parrot_load_bytecode failure? Ian Joyce wondered what would happen if Parrot_load_bytecode failed. The answer:
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-01-18 through 2005-01-31
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-01-18 through 2005-01-31 All~ Welcome to another double feature summary. Sadly, this one was delayed because of an argument that I was/am having with my connection. Fortunately, a generous neighbor has allowed me to use his connection for the time being. So, with that random act of kindness in mind, I bring you Perl 6 Language Perl 6 on E Rich Morin wondered if features of the language E would be supported on Perl 6. Larry told him that many would, and As a limiting case, you can always back out the entire Perl grammar and install the E grammar in its place. This was left as an exercise for the reader. http://xrl.us/exm4 -- the thread http://www.erights.org/ -- E's homepage challenge the Palmer... Luke Palmer produced answers to Austin Hastings's How do I questions. Anyone else with such questions should send them to the list lest Luke's learnedness loses luster. http://xrl.us/exm5 refactoring Perl automatically Matisse Enzer re-re-raised the thread on refactoring Perl. This time he posted a link to EPIC an Eclipse plugin that uses Devel::Refactor. Unfortunately, I think that he is still using the google groups interface to post the language. I shall repeat, emails posted via google groups do NOT make it to the list itself. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/perl.perl6.language/browse_frm/thre ad/d31481c114e88a11/8fde39f7f7418669?_done=%2Fgroup%2Fperl.perl6.languag e%3F_doneTitle=Back+to+topics_doneTitle=Backd#8fde39f7f7418669 -- thread http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/ -- EPIC http://xrl.us/exm6 loops, bare blocks, and my head hurts Juerd wondered if last/redo could be used outside loops. Larry provided the long answer. The short answer is no, things act basically rationally so that return, next, and last all behave as expected. http://xrl.us/exm7 where without type Juerd wondered if he could use a where clause with a type. The answer is yes, as it will often be wanted to restrict values admitted to a multimethod. This led me to the evil thought of putting side-effects in a where clause on several multi-methods and watching the pain of resolution cause very difficult to find bugs. Sometime I think that my mind looks for nasty ways to write bad code a little too much. http://xrl.us/exm8 Autothreading Luke Palmer posted his musing about autothreading. I must say it looks powerful enough to blow off your entire lower body if you shoot yourself in the foot. http://xrl.us/exm9 Perl 6 Compiler Pugs Not just ugly dogs anymore, they are also P6 interpreters written in Haskel. Sounds really cool to me. http://xrl.us/exna Parrot MMD and meta-stuff In a thread that was also posted to p6l (sorry about that), I attempt to explain how parrot object system is already very close to the Common Lisp Object System and why it should become even closer. I am not sure if I succeeded or not. My ability to express really abstract thoughts without a white board is poor. http://xrl.us/exnb RT clean up Will Coleda has been putting an extensive amount of work into cleaning up part for public presentation with a focus on RT and organization. http://xrl.us/exnc -- Hall of Shame 15308 http://xrl.us/exnd -- ROADMAP http://xrl.us/exne http://xrl.us/exnf http://xrl.us/exng http://xrl.us/exnh http://xrl.us/exni http://xrl.us/exnj http://xrl.us/exnk http://xrl.us/exnm http://xrl.us/exnn http://xrl.us/exno http://xrl.us/exnp http://xrl.us/exnq http://xrl.us/exnr argv[0] Wukk (who is Will when I get off key) wants the name of the invoked executable. Dan upped the anti by offering the full and base name variants of the interpreter, the program, and the invoked thing. http://xrl.us/exns OSCON Robert Spier put out a call for OSCON proposals. http://xrl.us/exnt read and readline Matt Diephouse has been working on getting read and readline cleaned up. http://xrl.us/exnu -- RT ticket http://xrl.us/exnv -- discussion http://xrl.us/exnw -- partial resolution http://xrl.us/exnx -- an offered patch test_main.c Bloves posted a patch updating test_main.c. Unfortunately, it turns out that this file is obsolete and needs to be removed. http://xrl.us/exny MinGW support François Perrad provided a patch to improve MinGW support. Leo applied it. http://xrl.us/exnz Compile problems Will Coleda has a failing fresh build. Warnock applies. http://xrl.us/exn2 NCI improvements Bernhard Schmalhofer provided a patch improving NCI stuff. Leo applied it. http://xrl.us/exn3 VS.NET 2003 Sriram Krishnan fought through a build on VS.NET 2003. He overcame problems and even posted a summary.
This weeks summary
All~ I have been struggling with my internet for the past 4 days, so this weeks summary will be part of a double feature fortnight's summary next week. Figured that I would provide advanced notice though... Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Proposed vtable changes WRT method lookup
All~ On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 10:18:52 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Sam Ruby [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leopold Toetsch wrote: Below inline attached is a proposal for vtable changes, mainly WRT method lookup. First, a general question: under what circumstances is it OK and/or expected for the opcode Cgetclass and the VTABLE entry VTABLE_get_class to return different results? No. The opcode should just call VTABLE_get_class() and return, what that method returns. At the moment, these return quite different results for all of the standard PMCs. The Cgetclass opcode currently returns, what the type registry Cclass_hash provides. This is ok for the standard PMCs, because the registered class is Cvtable-data. But the opcode should just call VTABLE_get_class(). The more general observation behind this question: if Parrot is going to provide a mechanism by which a class can override get_class, then the runtime should depend on such interfaces instead of bypassing them and attempting to standardize on mechanisms. Yes. The proposed changes are one step towards that goal. I'd like to have a standard interface for classes, a default implementation for Parrot core PMCs and Parrot standard objects, and all the phases of class manipulation should of course be overridable, i.e. the individual methods are all called through vtable functions. It looks like we are creating ourselves a reasonable subset of the Common Lisp Object System here. Given that CLOS was created to allow Lisp programs to modify their objects' semantics to those of a different dialect of Lisp, perhaps we could learn from their structure. We have an mro array just like CLOS, we have a class PMC just like CLOS. If we add to it support. MMD, however, is where things begin to differ. Instead of havng the find_method with the extra mmd_nr, we could have a MMD_Resolution PMC which would then get the mro from each class, and figure out which method to call based on that. Logically this would make some sense as no single class can have the smarts to do MMD since it depends on all objects involved. This also allows each MMD function to dispatch according to the language which defined the function (and thus the MMD_Resolution PMC for that function). Hope that makes sense, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Proposed vtable changes WRT method lookup
Leo~ On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:52:52 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... If we add to it support. MMD, however, is where things begin to differ. Instead of havng the find_method with the extra mmd_nr, we could have a MMD_Resolution PMC which would then get the mro from each class, and figure out which method to call based on that. That was Cvtable-dispatch in the proposal. Cfind_method is just called to query one object or class, if it can do the method. Finding the final (MMD) function is done separately with a distinct vtable method (and probably implemented inside some meta class PMC). That makes sense. If the vtable-dispatch method is attatched to some PMC, what provides that PMC? Is it the MMD function being called (what I would suggest), some environmental one, or something else? Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-01-11 through 2005-01-18
Perl 6 Summary for 2005-01-11 through 2005-01-18 Welcome to yet another Perl Summary brought to you by music and pizza (although the pizza is late in arriving). Like many summaries before it, we start with an attempt at non sequitur and Perl 6 Language. Perl 6 Language idiomatic Perl 6 Stéphane Payrard expressed a desire for more Perl 6 sample code. Luke Palmer issued the following, possibly foolish, response: post some \how do I\s to the list, and I'll reply with code. Austin Hastings posed a couple, not response yet... http://xrl.us/er2z generalized tainting Yuval Kogman posted an interesting musing about contagious properties (if you get your value from someone with a contagious property, you get the property too). No responses, but it sounds interesting... http://xrl.us/er22 stick/pick Richard H. suggested a new pair of functions stick/pick which would have modifiers such that push, pop, shift, unshift, and splice could all be calls to stick or pick with appropriate modifiers. Unfortunately, I think he posted it to the google groups interface, as it is there but not on the list :-( http://xrl.us/er23 Perl 6 IDE again. Matisse Enzer re-raised the question of the feasibility of an IDE for Perl 6. Unfortunately it was re-raised on google groups (I think). http://xrl.us/er24 1x6 vs 6 The dimension slice issues continue to grind with new suggestions from David Green and Craig DeForest. http://xrl.us/er25 life span of loop counters Joe Gottman wants an easy way to restrict the lifespan of his loop counter to his loop. Some folk (myself included) did not like the answer of wrap it in a scope. Some others (myself excluded) thought the answer don't use loop, use for was a bit of a cop-out. http://xrl.us/er26 forany forall Jonathan Lang wondered how to check if a condition is true for any element of an array or for all elements. The answer are the aptly named junction creaters any() and all(). http://xrl.us/er27 Perl 6 Compiler Already reached p6c and no pizza :-( Ah well, it was a light week. Parrot Internals Already p6i and no pizza :-(. Although it was close, after I wrote the head2 my door buzzed. It was just a neighbor who got locked out, but that would have been impressive timing. blib in 25 seconds Peter Christopher asked for a 25 second summary of the ./blib directory. Apparently this is harder than Hamlet in 30 seconds, as one of the two has been done. http://xrl.us/er28 searching archives Peter Christopher wanted to know if there was a way he could search the mailing list archives. Steve Fink pointed him to groups.google.com and the ever popular discussion topic aardvarks. http://xrl.us/er29 dynclasses with external dependencies Bernhard Schmalhofer wondered if there was a reasonable way to check for external dependencies for dynamic PMCs that does not involve the core Parrot configure step. Later he supplied a patch with his GDBMHash pmc, which motivated the question. Leo applied it and hinted at a mythical multi-stage configure http://xrl.us/er3a -- question http://xrl.us/er3b -- patch s/interpreter/INTERP/g Bernhard Schmalhofer provided a patch making the above clean up all over. Leo and Sam applied different parts of it. http://xrl.us/er3c black-ops parrot Robert Spier posted a link to the new listing for Parrot on CIA. Nicholas Clark dove for cover assuming he was going to be disappeared. http://cia.navi.cx/stats/project/parrot -- CIA http://xrl.us/er3d -- actual post PDD problems on the website Dave Brondsema noticed that PDDs 4-6 were not finding their way to the website properly. Will Coleda fired off a patch. http://xrl.us/er3e cleaning old tickets Will Coleda, in his never ending role as RT janitor, closed out a few obsolete tickets. Thanks Will. http://xrl.us/er3f -- stone-age exceptions http://xrl.us/er3g -- assemble.pl http://xrl.us/er3h -- languages/imcc Scope and Timely Destruction Leopold Toetsch raised the recurring issue of timely destruction. It turns out that timely destruction is hard. Various people made various suggestions. Let me state one thing clearly as if I don't, Dan doubtless will: Parrot will NOT use reference counting of any kind. There are a great many reasons for this some of which Luke Palmer explained. http://xrl.us/er3i ParrotIO* should have been PMC* Peter Christopher provided a patch fixing a pointer declaration bug. Leo applied it. http://xrl.us/er3j questions for the compiler FAQ Some time ago, a compiler faq was started. It was to contain answers to questions that people posted to the list. Will Coleda posted 2 such questions, but got Warnocked.
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-01-03 through 2004-01-11
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-01-03 through 2004-01-11 Welcome to another Perl 6 summary. In this summary, we will explore such thrilling issues as multi-dimensional slices of Chinese food. After all, the amount of sauce any piece of Chinese food can absorb is proportional to its surface area, which is a direct function of the number of dimensions in which it is sliced (provided that we ignore degenerate cases like fractal cuts of Peking duck). Perl 6 Language 1x6 vs 6 Craig DeForest wondered how to disambiguate a 1x6 2D array slice from a 6 element 1D array slice. He suggested a syntax inspired by PDL. Larry admitted to not having examined this particular issue and stated that he was open to suggestions. Some suggestions arrived. http://xrl.us/eout code as comment Stéphane Payrard wanted to know if there is an easy way to alias arguments to a function. Thus allowing a longer version for readability when calling the function and a short version inside the function. Larry suggested $s is namedsubject, which I like. The thread then devolved into punning in French. http://xrl.us/eouu -- main thread on p6l http://xrl.us/eouv -- initial post on p6c Perl 6 Compiler Pascal - Pcode - Parrot - Profit Sven Schubert asked about the feasibility of putting Pascal on Parrot. He noted that with the infrastructure mentioned in Perl 6 and Parrot Essentials the problem would not be too bad. Apparently Essentials makes a few promises that we have yet to live up to. But we are working towards it. In the mean time, Stéphane Payrard suggested a way for him to kill to bird with one stone: Pcode. http://xrl.us/eouw -- Pcode suggestion http://xrl.us/eoux -- initial post Grammar improvements Luke Blanshard submitted some rules for Perl6::Grammar. Luke Palmer committed a slight variantion of his work, and the hacking commences... http://xrl.us/eouy Parrot pop_pad Peter Christopher wondered why pop_pad had not been implemented last week. This week Leo implemented it and asked for tests. http://xrl.us/eouz Resizable arrays Simon Glover asked why ResizablePMCArray was so different from all of it Resizable*Array bretheren. The answer is the Leo improved it. This brings up an obvious task for someone looking for a reasonably friendly chunk of Parrot to work on. Rationalizing the implementation of the various Resizable*Arrays would probably be a good task for a novice looking to dig into something. Perhaps one who is on winter break... http://xrl.us/eou2 Parrot 0.1.1 nci troubles Ian Joyce noticed that parrot 0.1.1 was having some trouble with nci.t. Leo admitted that this was the case, but it is fixed in CVS. http://xrl.us/eou3 test or benchmark Nicholas Clark wondered if resizablestringarray.t was actually a benchmark, because it had a big number which was really hurting his poor machine. Simon Glover admitted to the copy paste error. http://xrl.us/eou4 x86 solaris 2.5.1 and 2.7 Andy Bach and Nicholas Clark worked towards getting parrot happier on the aforementioned architecture. This thread seemed to peter out when Nicholas asked how do we run a callback unconditionally after gccversion is known, independent of its value?. http://xrl.us/eou5 VTABLE_call_method Leo and Sam had a disagreement about whether a call_method vtable would make sense. I think that we are waiting for higher intervention... http://xrl.us/eou6 updated perlhist.txt Will Coleda applied Bernhard's patch updating perlhist.txt and streams.t. http://xrl.us/eou7 Warnock Warnocked Will Coleda applied the long Warnocked update to Warnock's contact information with only a trace of irony. http://xrl.us/eou8 gcov of perlarray.pmc reaches 100% Simon Glover got perlarray.pmc to have full test coverage. Nifty. Some brave soul (possibly fitting an earlier description) should try this with the Fixed*Arrays... http://xrl.us/eou9 Parrot under Solaris 9 Nicholas Clark, Andy Doughery, and Christian Aperghis-Tramoni all tried to convince Parrot to work on Solaris. They are brave souls. http://xrl.us/eova parrot-config updates Peter Christopher asked questions about the parrot-config.imc. He also provided an initial solution. http://xrl.us/eovb -- questions http://xrl.us/eovc -- solutions Key Question Simon Glover noticed some bad behavior with respect to Key PMCs. Leo and Sam both admitted that it was bad and that some work needed to be done. http://xrl.us/eovd Parrot PDL Bernhard Schmalhofer posted a pointer to PDL. Luke Palmer pondered Piddles as Parrot PMCs. Craig DeForest proposed a path passing through PDL's PP and pausing at Parrot. (Parenthetically, perhaps the preponderance of Ps in
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-12-06 through 2004-12-20
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-12-06 through 2004-12-20 All~ The observant among you might notice that I missed last week's summary. With the hubbub and confusion of the holidays, I blame ninjas, in particular Ryu Hyabusa. Given that Christmas is next weekend and New Years is the weekend after that, what you are like to see in the future are a pair of 10 day summaries are some other equally irregular pattern. If you are thinking of using the dates of my summaries to seed a random number generator, I would advise against it as I can be really easily bought ;-) Without more ado, I give you this fortnight's summary starting with Perl 6 Language Lexical scope of parametric declaration blocks Ashley Winters wanted to know what the differences between type parameter lists and sub parameter lists. Luke Palmer could not think of any. http://xrl.us/ef7f object representation Abhijit Mahabal noticed that S12 allowed one to supply an object layout to bless() and wondered if one could really have two instances of the same class with different layouts. Larry admitted that he had probably not intended for that to be the case. http://xrl.us/ef7g capturing into a hash, hypothetically Patrick R. Michaud wondered about capturing things into a hash in S05, as ident now captures. Larry admitted that it was probably supposed to be («ident»), but also noticed that this exposed a blind spot in the design. He went on to ruminate about this blind spot and ways to solve it. Much churning went on and it seems that multiple different (but identically named) rule captures can now be performed by adding information after a dash ala ws-1 ws-2 ws-3. http://xrl.us/ef7h custom subscripting When talking about key Type for a hash, Larry offhandedly commented about attaching a block to a hash or array to provided custom subscripting. Many people drooled over the awesome syntactic sugar this could provide them. http://xrl.us/ef7i undeclared attributes Dave Whipp hoped that he need not predeclare his attributes as they necessarily start with $. the fact that a new variable is an attribute is easy to determine. Abhijit Mahabal thought that it would not be a good idea, but then asked if classes could be declared as not strict. Still waiting for more official word... http://xrl.us/ef7j classes which autovivify attributes Abhijit Mahabal wondered about creating a class that populates it attributes on demand, as some of them might be rarely used. Larry suggested that it would be something that one should not undertake lightly and a simple hash attribute would provide most of what is wanted. This also morphed into the eternal debate about strictures and one liners. There has to be a joke in there somewhere A stricture, a one-liner, and Larry Wall walk into a bar... http://xrl.us/ef7k auto my Rod Adams wondered if having my occur automatically for new variables might be worthwhile. Several people commented that some languages already do this and it is simply an aesthetic choice. The concensus seems to be that Perl has already made this choice and is sticking with its answer. http://xrl.us/ef7m Perl 6 Compiler At long last google has picked up P6C, I guess I have slightly mixed emotions about this as it takes a running gag from me. Alas, I will have to find another. PGE tests Markus Laire began working on a formerly small script to convert perl 5's regex tests to PGE. He produced a modest 700 tests a few of which pass. Nice work. Patrick suggested only running the script once and thereafter maintaining the tests external to perl5. http://xrl.us/ef7n -- initial post http://xrl.us/ef7o -- Patrick's suggestion http://xrl.us/ef7p -- how to deal with abiguity converting On your marks, get set, HACK! Luke Palmer opened the door to hacking and has requested rules for parts of the Perl 6 Grammar. Patrick posted a link to the SVN repository for it. http://xrl.us/ef7q https://svn.perl.org/perl6 Parrot \0namespace Leo commited a fix to support namespace mangling. http://xrl.us/ef7r store global = invalidate method cache Leo commited a fix to invalidate the method cache when a global is stored. http://xrl.us/ef7s pow, hash, batman sound effect! Leo added pow and hash as vtables and opcodes. He also renamed new_extended to instantiate. http://xrl.us/ef7t base scalar semantics Leo asked for comments about base PMC semantics and receive none. http://xrl.us/ef7u split now independant of Perl James deBoer provided a patch removing the dependancy on Perl Array in split. Will applied it. http://xrl.us/ef7v SVN Periodically every project project has a thread about
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Leo~ On Wed, 8 Dec 2004 20:29:00 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So my conclusion that (in combination with restoring registers to the values of continuation creation) I,S,N registers are almost unusable is correct? I would disagree. Let me take the above example and work with it a little: $I0 = 10 loop: $P0 = shift array dec $I0 if $I0 goto loop We are (for the moment) assuming that shift array somehow causes a full continuations to be taken and then invoked it in a subsequent call. Then this code would infinite loop; however, so would this code as the second call is returning through the first calls continuation. $P0 = shift array $P1 = shift array On the other hand, if every call to shift array took a full continuation, did some stuff, and eventually returned through its return continuation. Then neither would infinite loop, as every call to shift array would have its own return continuation. What this means is that care must be taken when you are writing code that you expects to be invoked multiple times. However, if you are a function that on your second invocation returns via the continuation from you first invocation, you should probably expect to be called again because it happened the first time! If you are expecting other behavior, it is probably because one person wrote the whole chain of calls and had some extra knowledge about the caller. This author may have to be a little wary about value vs reference semantics, but programmers are fairly used to that pitfall by now. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: svn
Will~ On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 19:19:07 -0500, William Coleda [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there a plan at any point to move to an svn repository from cvs? I'd like to work on a patch to move all the perl* pmcs into dynclasses, which would involve quite a bit of file moving, and I'll happily wait for svn if we're going that way, since it'll be smoother. While I personally like the idea, I think it is unlikely given how much slower svn is on sizable repositories. Of course I have not tried it recently, so maybe that has changed... All that being said, I am in absolutely no position of authority about this... Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-29 through 2004-12-06
Leo~ Yup. From: James deBoer [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 15:50:36 -0500 Subject: Re: [perl #32769] [PATCH] Standardizes and improves the formatting of internal_exception() calls Matt On Tue, 7 Dec 2004 09:23:34 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: internal exception clean up James deBoer submitted a patch that cleans up internal exception output. Then later he submitted a second better version of the patch. Warnock applies. From: James deBoer Date: 03.12.2004 ... I will post a new patch shortly. Did I miss the second patch? leo -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-29 through 2004-12-06
Perl 6 Summary for 2004-11-29 through 2004-12-06 All~ Last week I asked for help identifying the source of a quotation. One friendly soul suggested Alan J. Perlis, but could not find an actual attribution. It did lead me to find a very applicable (and in my mind funny) quote from Perlis, which I will now inflict upon you all, before your regularly scheduled summary: When someone says I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done, give him a lollipop. -Alan J. Perlis Perl 6 Language qq:i Jim Cromie wondered if there could be a qq:i which sometimes interpolates and sometimes doesn't depending on whether the variable had been previously defined. There was some discussion which led to the conclusion that this was just asking for strange bugs. http://xrl.us/d95h getters and setters John Siracusa wanted to know if Perl 6 would allow one to expose a member variable to the outside world, but then later intercept assignments to it without actually having to switch to using getters and setters in all of the code that uses the variable. The answer: yes, yes you can. http://xrl.us/d95i « foo Richard Proctor asked if he could do list of words». Juerd pointed out that this had already been asked. Which brings us to the fine point, ask not Larry for he will tell you both yes and no. Although in this case I think he said, probably... http://xrl.us/d95j flipflop operator Juerd wondered about the fate of the flipflop. Larry explained that while it had lost the election it was still going to work hard for you in the Senate. Err, that's not quite right, he said that It's leaving syntactically but not semantically., but the new syntax has not been specified... http://xrl.us/d95k temp $var Alexey Trofimenko wanted to know whether temp would preserve or destroy its old value. Larry is leaning towards the Perl 5 semantics of destroying, I think. http://xrl.us/d95m state vs my Alexey Trofimenko wondered how much advice about optimizing Ruby also applied to perl. Unfortunately, he also misunderstood the state specifier. The topic then quickly veered into what exactly state does. http://xrl.us/d95n specifying a hash's key type Abhijit Mahabal wanted to know if he could specify a hash's key type. The answer is yes, but the exact syntax seems to be worth a discussion. Luke Palmer, in his Mathematician's rage, attempted to shoot down any usage of Domain and Range, as they really should be Domain and Codomain. http://xrl.us/d95o http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Range_%28mathematics%29 -- wikipedia: range Range (mathematics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia container methods Ashley Winters wants to have syntax for calling a method on the container object rather than the containee. Luke Palmer agreed that this was problematic. Larry appears to be in no hurry to add more operators for this one, yet. http://xrl.us/d95p slight discrepancy between synopses Stéphane Payrard pointed out a small issue in some synopses. Larry replied oops. http://xrl.us/d95q arrays, lists, iterators, functions, coroutines, syntax Many people suggested many things about the best thing to replace the now missingop. I think Larry is leaning towards adding a undare = op, which would do cool things. I don't thing anything is final yet. http://xrl.us/d95r -- iterators as functions http://xrl.us/d95s -- unary = talk Push/Pop/Pull/Monkey Many folk voiced their dislike of shift and unshift. I must agree with them, but they also suggested a great many alternatives, including pull/put, get/unget, and even getting rid of Push/Pop. I must say that I really dislike that last idea, fortunately I am no alone. Currently we are waiting for inspiration to strike. http://xrl.us/d95t Topicalization It was noticed that for might override one's topic at undesired times. Larry rumminated about ways to solve this. http://xrl.us/d95u Required Whitespace Rod Adams does not like inconsistent whitespace rules. Larry explained why the existing rules really were consistent. http://xrl.us/d95v Perl 6 Compilers The lack of traffic on p6c has given me another space to abuse. You should listen to Soul Coughing. If you would like to join in the fun of abusing p6c, you should submit tests. Nothing is more abusive then stress testing ;-) Parrot Tuning and Monitoring Matt S asked how much support for tuning and monitoring. This week I exercise the awesome powers of the summarizer and invoke the mighty Warnock's Dilemnia. http://xrl.us/d95w imcc.globals-- Leo removed some imcc globals. Nice work. http://xrl.us/d95x ensure directories exist first
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Leo~ On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:26:24 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ok. I'll try to summarize, where I see the problem. No diagrams, just code :) [snip] Thanks for the clear explanation. I did not realize that S registers could switch pointers, that does make things a little harder. I have a recommendation for a possible hybrid solution. Incur the cost of spilling I,S,N registers heavily. Restore the state of P register. I suggest this because it seems likely that P registers will have much greater pressure on them then the others. This would allow us to minimize the spilling of them (where spilling is most likely), while still allowing the usage of I,S,N registers (which are less likely to be used to the point of spilling. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Leo~ On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 09:26:24 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ok. I'll try to summarize, where I see the problem. No diagrams, just code :) [snip] Thanks for the clear explanation. I did not realize that S registers could switch pointers, that does make things a little harder. I have a recommendation for a possible hybrid solution. Incur the cost of spilling I,S,N registers heavily. Restore the state of P register. I suggest this because it seems likely that P registers will have much greater pressure on them then the others. This would allow us to minimize the spilling of them (where spilling is most likely), while still allowing the usage of I,S,N registers (which are less likely to be used to the point of spilling. (Sorry for sending this to you twice Leo, accidentally did not cc the list) Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
All~ I must admit I am a little confused as to what the problem is. Given that any continuation which was originally created as a return continuation will restore its registers, all code which uses P/S registers will work as expected. Furthermore, I/N registers will be usable accross function calls, it is just that continuations will cause the same to computate as before to be repeated (which is really not that much of a spanner in the works). Please don't draw the same diagrams and claim that registers life is secretly extended. That is not the case, as the invocation of the (once) return continuation will restore the register allocation to the correct state that code after it is expecting. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Parrot Strong typing
Cameron~ On Wed, 01 Dec 2004 16:53:32 +1000, Cameron Zemek [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The FAQ mentions that the JVM and CLR (.Net VM) are not suited to dynamic languages. I was wondering why this is the case. Also could the Parrot VM be used effectively with strong typing languages. I would like to at some stage try to implement a proof of concept of a language that has strong typing. For example: def name = new string (maxLength = 15) name = this name is too long # throws an InvalidValue exception def postcode = new integer (minValue = 0, maxValue = ) postcode = -1 # throws an OutOfBoundsException Basically, the idea is to be able to set constraints on variables, and define new datatypes that have contraints. Also be able to set methods that can do custom validation of the new value. The idea of the language is for use to write database-centric applications. I don't think that what you are referring to there is actually strong typing. Strong typing is more generally concerned with detecting type errors at compile time (as oposed to range errors at runtime). While it would be possible to detect the errors in the example you gave at compile time, your mention of exceptions leads me to believe that you want runtime behavior. Strong typing can be more clearly seen in something like haskell where you can define a function len [] = 0 len [ _ | A ] = 1 + len A the compile will automatically detect that the len function has the signature list of * - int and will then issue a compile time error if you call len foo. Hope that helps to clarify things, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Bill~
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:12:30 -0800, Bill Coffman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:45:39 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
At 11:20 AM -0800 11/30/04, Jeff Clites wrote:
% cat continuation6.ruby
def strange
callcc {|continuation| $saved = continuation}
end
def outer
a = 0
strange()
a = a + 1
print a = , a, \n
end
Through the joys of reference types, a will continue to increase
forevermore, assuming the compiler hasn't incorrectly put a in an int
register. (Which'd be wrong)
I can see that there is true magic in the power of using references in
this way. Nonetheless, how can the compiler figure out that it can't
use an integer here? The compiler should use integers when it can,
but it sounds like you are saying that when a variable crosses a sub
call (which might invoke a continuation) it will then have to be a PMC
or String to do the right thing.
This has come up before. It turns out that the compiler will likely
be able to make very few optimizations of this sort on its own.
However, user code rarely needs this kind of optimization. Library
code is what should really get it, and the library author can provide
hint/directives to the compiler for cases like this. If you took a
continuation inside a callback from a library routine and then invoked
it, I don't think that you would have any reasonable guess what the
library routine would do, so either behavior would seem reasonable.
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-???
Re: Parrot Strong typing
Michael~ On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:44:37 -0500, Michael Walter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hey, On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 09:33:27 -0500, Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Strong typing can be more clearly seen in something like haskell where you can define a function len [] = 0 len [ _ | A ] = 1 + len A Actually, in Haskell this would be: len [] = 0 len (_:a) = 1 + len a the compile will automatically detect that the len function has the signature list of * - int In Haskell this would be: forall a b. (Num b) = [a] - b (A function from a list of things to an arbitrary numeric type. That's sexy, btw.) and will then issue a compile time error if you call len foo. As Strings in Haskell are lists of chars, this will work just fine wink ;-) Confusingly yours, Michael I should have known there would be a real Haskell fan in the room... Thanks for the catch, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Dan~ On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 08:28:35 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 1:45 AM -0800 11/29/04, Jeff Clites wrote: On Nov 28, 2004, at 2:48 AM, Piers Cawley wrote: I just thought of a heuristic that might help with register preservation: A variable/register should be preserved over a function call if either of the following is true: 1. The variable is referred to again (lexically) after the function has returned. 2. The variable is used as the argument of a function call within the current compilation unit. That doesn't solve it, though you'd think it would. Here's the counter-example: x = 1 foo() print x y = 2 return y You'd think that x and y could use the same memory location (register, variable--whatever), since ostensibly their lifetimes don't overlap. But continuation re-invocation can cause foo() to return multiple times, and each time it should print 1, but it won't if x and y use the same slot (it would print 2 each time after the first). In truth, their lifetimes do overlap, due to the hidden (potential) loops created by continuations. Except... we've already declared that return continuations are special, and preserve the registers in the 16-31 range. So when we return from foo, regardless of how or how many times, the pointer to x's PMC will be in a register if it was in there before the call to foo, if it's in the preserved range. So in this case there's no problem. Things'll look like: x = 1 # new P16, .Integer; P16 = 1 # P16 has pointer value 0x04 foo() # foo invocation print x # P16 still has pointer value 0x04 y = 2 # new P16, .Integer; P16 = 2 # P16 now has pointer value 0x08 return y # Passes back 0x08 With more or less clarity. I think that the concern is for the circumstance where foo() promotes it return continuation to a full continuation. Then, that guarantee is no longer provided (I think), and repeated invocation could leave y in P16 rather than x. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Dan~ On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 09:49:54 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 9:36 AM -0500 11/30/04, Matt Fowles wrote: Dan~ On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 08:28:35 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 1:45 AM -0800 11/29/04, Jeff Clites wrote: On Nov 28, 2004, at 2:48 AM, Piers Cawley wrote: I just thought of a heuristic that might help with register preservation: A variable/register should be preserved over a function call if either of the following is true: 1. The variable is referred to again (lexically) after the function has returned. 2. The variable is used as the argument of a function call within the current compilation unit. That doesn't solve it, though you'd think it would. Here's the counter-example: x = 1 foo() print x y = 2 return y You'd think that x and y could use the same memory location (register, variable--whatever), since ostensibly their lifetimes don't overlap. But continuation re-invocation can cause foo() to return multiple times, and each time it should print 1, but it won't if x and y use the same slot (it would print 2 each time after the first). In truth, their lifetimes do overlap, due to the hidden (potential) loops created by continuations. Except... we've already declared that return continuations are special, and preserve the registers in the 16-31 range. So when we return from foo, regardless of how or how many times, the pointer to x's PMC will be in a register if it was in there before the call to foo, if it's in the preserved range. So in this case there's no problem. Things'll look like: x = 1 # new P16, .Integer; P16 = 1 # P16 has pointer value 0x04 foo() # foo invocation print x # P16 still has pointer value 0x04 y = 2 # new P16, .Integer; P16 = 2 # P16 now has pointer value 0x08 return y # Passes back 0x08 With more or less clarity. I think that the concern is for the circumstance where foo() promotes it return continuation to a full continuation. Then, that guarantee is no longer provided (I think), and repeated invocation could leave y in P16 rather than x. Nope. The guarantee's still there. Promotion will force things up the call chain to get marked as un-recyclable, but registers still get restored on invocation. In that case, I am confused. When does the guarantee NOT apply? Thanks, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Dan~ On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:22:29 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 9:15 PM +0100 11/23/04, Leopold Toetsch wrote: Below inline/attached are some thoughts WRT the subject. leo Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation 1) Recent discussions have shown that we obviously can't handle all the side effects of continuations correctly. Reusing preserved (non-volatile) registers after a call isn't possible any more, due to loops in the CFG a continuation might create. I admit, I've been watching the discussion and I just don't understand why there's a problem. So far as I can tell there are two cases here: 1) A return continuation 2) A regular continuation We've already established that a return continuation preserves the top half of the registers (though I think that's not been clear) so there's just no problem there -- at the point a return continuation returns, [IPSN]16-31 will be as they were when the return continuation was created. Which, in practice, makes the I and N registers useless for variables like loop counters, though fine for constants (both real and effective) So continuations, as such, don't make any difference here. A return is a return, and if it works right the first time it should work right all the times. The second case, where code takes an arbitrary continuation that returns to location X, wherever X is. I'm missing the problem there, too. Assuming there's a way to note the destination to the register allocator (with those points being places where all registers must be assumed to be trash) I'm not seeing the problem either. There are only two cases here, where the destination is marked and where it isn't. If it's marked, the register allocator assumes things are dirty and loads everything, which is fine. If it's unmarked, the code has essentially shot itself and everything quietly goes to hell since you've lied to the register allocator and you shouldn't do that. Which is fine too. Don't Do That. N.B. that this is an issue that only affects the PIR register allocator -- I'm not seeing a case where this can be an issue for anything else, including plain assembly. If I'm missing something this would be a good time to point out the missing bits. That makes sense to me (and in fact matches what I have been failing to articulate for a while now), thanks for the clarification. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Leo~ On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 17:30:43 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 9:15 PM +0100 11/23/04, Leopold Toetsch wrote: Below inline/attached are some thoughts WRT the subject. leo Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation 1) Recent discussions have shown that we obviously can't handle all the side effects of continuations correctly. Reusing preserved (non-volatile) registers after a call isn't possible any more, due to loops in the CFG a continuation might create. I admit, I've been watching the discussion and I just don't understand why there's a problem. So far as I can tell there are two cases here: 1) A return continuation 2) A regular continuation We've already established that a return continuation preserves the top half of the registers (though I think that's not been clear) so there's just no problem there -- That term preserves needs some more clarification. Some months ago we used the savetop / restoretop opcodes. They made a copy of half of the register frame and restored it on return. The caller and the subroutine did executed in the registers inside the interpreter structure. We decided to give up this scheme in favour of the indirect register addressing. Now we have a new register frame, where a subroutine is executing. Returning from the subroutine returns to the other register frame, which of course means that the registers are preserved, because the subroutine executed in a freshly allocated and of course different register frame. ... at the point a return continuation returns, [IPSN]16-31 will be as they were when the return continuation was created. Which, in practice, makes the I and N registers useless for variables like loop counters, though fine for constants (both real and effective) Huh? You are now back with register copying? With the additional benefit that we can't use integer loop counters anymore? Sorry, I can't believe that you are proposing such a broken usage of (return) continuations. Not necessarily, you only need to copy in the case where a return continuation was promoted. Thus, you can avoid copying for the common call/return case. Also, we could allow hints that indicate a point below which continuations do not need to be promoted (although this is an optimization). Also, it is not that broken. In fact it has identical semantics to the old save/restore ones. Recall that the restore would overwrite the I/N values with what they were at save time. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Jeff~ On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 10:15:00 -0800, Jeff Clites [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Nov 30, 2004, at 5:28 AM, Dan Sugalski wrote: At 1:45 AM -0800 11/29/04, Jeff Clites wrote: On Nov 28, 2004, at 2:48 AM, Piers Cawley wrote: I just thought of a heuristic that might help with register preservation: A variable/register should be preserved over a function call if either of the following is true: 1. The variable is referred to again (lexically) after the function has returned. 2. The variable is used as the argument of a function call within the current compilation unit. That doesn't solve it, though you'd think it would. Here's the counter-example: x = 1 foo() print x y = 2 return y You'd think that x and y could use the same memory location (register, variable--whatever), since ostensibly their lifetimes don't overlap. But continuation re-invocation can cause foo() to return multiple times, and each time it should print 1, but it won't if x and y use the same slot (it would print 2 each time after the first). In truth, their lifetimes do overlap, due to the hidden (potential) loops created by continuations. Except... we've already declared that return continuations are special, and preserve the registers in the 16-31 range. So when we return from foo, regardless of how or how many times, the pointer to x's PMC will be in a register if it was in there before the call to foo, if it's in the preserved range. So in this case there's no problem. Things'll look like: x = 1 # new P16, .Integer; P16 = 1 # P16 has pointer value 0x04 foo() # foo invocation print x # P16 still has pointer value 0x04 y = 2 # new P16, .Integer; P16 = 2 # P16 now has pointer value 0x08 return y # Passes back 0x08 With more or less clarity. But the problem isn't preservation per se. When a continuation (originally captured inside of foo) is invoked, the frame will be restored with the register contents it had when it last executed, so P16 in your annotations will have pointer value 0x08 after the first time that continuation is invoked (because y = 2 will have executed and changed the register contents). That will result in print x printing the value 2, which is wrong from the perspective of the code (that line should always print 1). To do-the-right-thing, the register allocator either has to use a separate register to hold y, or needs to do some other preservation dance (instead of relying on preserved registers). And again, I think the reason for this is that the lifetimes of x and y overlap, so you can't just use the same register to store them. The only surprising part of all of this is that their lifetimes in fact overlap--they only overlap due to continuations, and wouldn't otherwise. It's the implicit branch from the return to the op-after-the-call-to-foo that's causing them to overlap. We can handle this fairly easily by having the promotion swap in a new invoke vtable for the return continuation. The new invoke vtable will put into place a copy of its context (rather than the context itself). Thus promoted return continuations can be invoked repeatedly (at the cost of a memory copy), and non-promoted ones can be invoked once and then immediately added to the continuation free list (possibly by their invoke function). Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Jeff~
On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 11:20:50 -0800, Jeff Clites [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Nov 30, 2004, at 10:27 AM, Dan Sugalski wrote:
At 10:15 AM -0800 11/30/04, Jeff Clites wrote:
Oh. No, it won't. We've declared that return continuations will always
leave the top half registers in the state they were when the return
continuation was taken. In this case, when it's taken to pass into
foo, P16 is 0x04. When that return continuation is invoked, no matter
where or how many times, P16 will be set to 0x04. This does make
return continuations slightly different from 'plain' continuations,
but I think this is acceptable.
Ah, I see.
None of this should have anything to do with return continuations
specifically, since this is the case where the body of foo (or
something called from it) creates a real continuation, which as I
understand it is supposed to promote the return continuations to
real continuations all the way up the stack.
The return continuations have to maintain their returny-ness
regardless, otherwise they can't be trusted and we'd need to
unconditionally reload the registers after the return from foo(),
since there's no way to tell whether we were invoked via a normal
return continuation chain invocation, or whether something funky
happened down deep in the call chain.
Yeah, so I think that won't work correctly. Here's an example from Ruby
which I posted in a previous thread. If the return from the call to
strange() by outer() always restores the registers as of the point the
(return) continuation was created, then the below would print out a =
1 over and over, but really it's intended that the value should
increase, so with the behavior you describe, the following Ruby code
wouldn't work right:
% cat continuation6.ruby
def strange
callcc {|continuation| $saved = continuation}
end
def outer
a = 0
strange()
a = a + 1
print a = , a, \n
end
# these two lines are main
outer()
$saved.call
% ruby continuation6.ruby
a = 1
a = 2
a = 3
a = 4
a = 5
a = 6
a = 7
a = 8
a = 9
a = 10
...infinite loop, by design
a would need to be stored in a RubyInt PMC. In such a situation it
would work as the register for a is actually a pointer to its value.
An optimizer might try and lower a to an I register, but that would be
an invalid optimization.
Matt
--
Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory.
-???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
All~ On Mon, 29 Nov 2004 14:51:43 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Luke Palmer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It seems to me that there is no good solution to this problem without annotating the register set or killing the register allocator. I think I've proposed a reasonable solution: putting lexicals in registers. I would appreciate it if Dan (who I cc'ed this to directly) would weigh in on this thread. I think that we have present most of the options as clearly as we can, and a decision on how to move forward would be appreciated. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Segfaults on signal_(1|2)
All~ I get segfaults (mentioned previously) on signal_1.pasm and signal_2.pasm Despite these, make test reports success. For the interested: [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~/parrot$ uname -a Linux fowles 2.6.8-1-686 #1 Thu Nov 11 13:18:29 EST 2004 i686 GNU/Linux Fairly stock debian system (usually pretty forgiving). Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Leo~ On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:42:31 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And as a side effect it will make Dan's evils subs compile, because long-lived lexicals already have their storage aka register. Only temps need a register allocated. What happens to temps that need to cross function calls in your scheme? Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Leo~ On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 17:25:05 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leo~ On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 16:42:31 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And as a side effect it will make Dan's evils subs compile, because long-lived lexicals already have their storage aka register. Only temps need a register allocated. What happens to temps that need to cross function calls in your scheme? These would go along with the lexicals in the non-volatile area. But such temps are rare (AFAIK). You need a HLL construct like: a = b + c + foo() I am not sure that they are as rare as you think. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
phantom core files
All~ Aperiodically I notice that my parrot directory has quite a few core files in it (usually around 6), even though I have done nothing with it except cvs -q update -dP; [make realclean;perl Configure.pl;] make; make [full]test. Usually it says that all of the tests pass or one or two tests fail, but I don't notice it dieing painfully... Are these core files anything of significances? Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Leo~ On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 21:15:33 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Below inline/attached are some thoughts WRT the subject. leo Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation 1) Recent discussions have shown that we obviously can't handle all the side effects of continuations correctly. Reusing preserved (non-volatile) registers after a call isn't possible any more, due to loops in the CFG a continuation might create. There are two proposed, accepted but undesirable work arounds: a) don't reuse registers - drawback spilling b) refetch all from lexicals - drawback execution time Have we seen that this actually destroys us? Meaning, if we add the extra CFG arcs, do we start spilling like mad? If not, this is much ado about nothing. I proposed an alternate scheme that has minimal impact on existing code. Right now we guarantee that return continuations restore all non-volatile registers. If we extend that guarantee to all continuations, everything would just work with the caveat that changes to value registers (as opposed to reference registers) are lost. This is not a real loss though because refetch all lexicals already requires backing store for I and N registers. I suspect that Dan will be unhappy with both my answer and yours though, so we should probably hear his solution, which I think may be to add the extra CFG arcs. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Leo~ On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 23:26:39 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles wrote: Have we seen that this actually destroys us? Meaning, if we add the extra CFG arcs, do we start spilling like mad? If not, this is much ado about nothing. Please first have a look at Dan's recent posting about Evil Sub. Then estimate, how many subs may be called in 14000 basic blocks. For 100 subs only you get ~1 more edges ... Second, having this arcs means just that in that range i.e. from the first subroutine to the last, you can't reuse a register around a call. Question: how many from ~23000 registers might be effected. Please note the currently rather low spill count despite the huge register usage. Won't your approach put every one of those things in its own register? I proposed an alternate scheme that has minimal impact on existing code. C source code or bytecode? The latter isn't effected at all in my scheme if you just swap the two register ranges (I don't care currently). The impact on C source changes would be low, even JIT works with just s/ctx\.bp/ctp/g I meant it at the C level. This feels to me like a fairly major internal change. Thus, I am a little surprised that the impact would be as low as you claim. But you are definitely the authority on that. ... Right now we guarantee that return continuations restore all non-volatile registers. If we extend that guarantee to all continuations, everything would just work with the caveat that changes to value registers (as opposed to reference registers) are lost. This is not a real loss though because refetch all lexicals already requires backing store for I and N registers. You are missing the point. It's not a question of preserving, it's register re-using. And forcing all I and N registers into lexical PMCs totally defeats the optimized usage of these registers. I don't think that I am. I understand that the question is one of reuse. However, if a continuation restores registers to the data they had when the continuation was taken, then all of the registers will contain the things that exactly as the original allocator expects them. Code later on can overwrite those registers safe in the knowledge that any continuation which would jump back to the original point would also set up its own registers. Thus, there is no need for adding backward branches to the CFG. Also, you do not force all I,N registers into lexical PMCs. You only force those ones that need changes across re-invocations of a continuation to persistent to persist. I would expect that such usages are extremely infrequent and would not occur in finely tuned code. The majority of uses for I,N registers will be optimizations on number crunching, such algorithms will likely not use continuations. In fact, such algorithms are usually not stateful at all, and thus would be completely unaffected. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Lexicals, continuations, and register allocation
Leo~ On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 04:55:24 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Won't your approach put every one of those things in its own register? I've clearly stated that lexicals aka non-volatiles have distinct registers. Thus for these large subs, won't this be a large overhead? ... However, if a continuation restores registers to the data they had when the continuation was taken, then all of the registers will contain the things that exactly as the original allocator expects them. Yes. We had that scheme until the indirect register frame addressing. It was: savetop invokecc restoretop It was too slow - remember a factor of 5! Yes, but that is because we COPIED the data for every invocation. With what I am proposing we would only need to copy the data when invoking a full continuation (so that the full continuation can be invoked again later without disturbing its registers). Invoking return continuations would be exactly the same as it is now. Thus you only pay the cost if you are trying to do funny things with continuations. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: continuation enhanced arcs
Bill~ On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 11:49:59 -0800, Bill Coffman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: sub1() ---+ -+ ... || sub2() +-+ | ...| | sub3() ---+-+ In the continuations enhanced control flow graph (the control flow graph (cfg), after one considers the effects of continuations), it is possible for any subroutine to jump back to the exit point of any previous subroutine. Leo has drawn the picture a few times, as above, showing the complex web of links from any sub to any sub. It is the control flow graph which provides the register allocator with the information it nees to determines which variables interfere. They interfere if they could be active at the same time. If they interfere, they must be assigned different registers. It is also possible for functions to jump forward to the return continuation of a function called later on (this requires that function to be called, store it continuation somewhere, and then jump back to a function before the one in question, but it can happen.) Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Continuations, basic blocks, loops and register allocation
Leo~ Thanks for the clarification. Matt On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 08:48:58 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... Thus you can consider all of the following questions (even though they will be phrased as statements). 1) After a full continuation is taken all of the registers must be considered invalid. Calling a subroutine allocates a new register frame, that subs register frame pointer in the context points to these fresh registers. A continuation restores the context it captured, i.e. at the place, where it was created. This is true for all continuations. Inside the context there is a *pointer* to a register frame, which is therefore restored too. The effect of taking a continuation is therefore to restore registers to that state where the continuation was created. Due to calling conventions a part of the registers is volatile (used during a call or as return results), while the other part is non-volatile. Until here there is no difference between return or full continuation. The effect of a full continuation can be to create a loop, where the known control flow doesn't show a loop. Without further syntax to denote such loops 1) is true. This register invalidation happens, if a preserved register was e.g. only used once after the call and then that register got reassigned, which is allowed for a linear control flow but not inside a loop. This has per se nothing to do with a continuation. If you got an opcode that does *silently* a goto again_label the CFG doesn't cope with the loop, because it isn't there and things start breaking. The effect of a full continuation *is* to create such loops. 2) After a return continuation is taken, the registers can be trusted. Yes, according to usage in pdd03. 3) If someone takes a full continuation, all return continuations down the callstack must be promoted. If one *creates* a full continuation ... 4) After a function call, some magic needs to happen so that the code knows whether it came back to itself via a return continuation and can trust its registers, or it came back via a full continuation and cannot trust them. No. It's too late for magic. Either the CFG is known at compile time or refetching in the presence of full continuations is mandatory. For both the code must reflect the facts. Corrections welcome, Matt leo -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Continuations, basic blocks, loops and register allocation
Leo~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 09:23:24 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: [ continuations should restore registers ] I am sorry, but I don't understand what you are trying to say here. Would you mind rewording it for me? Imagine a simple loop: i = 0 lp: foo() inc i if i 10 goto lp Looking at the loop counter a programmer or optimizer could easily decide that using an I-Reg for it instead of a P-Reg is fine. Now comes your proposed implementation for continuations: they copy the register frame on creation and restore it on invocation. Besides of the big cost of the memcpy's this simple loop above suddenly stops working, depending on the implementation of foo() - which might be outside your control. BTW in an early stage we had exactly this behavior of continuations. This was abandoned. The subject was IIRC something like Should continuations close over registers. The answer was clearly no. There is one thing I am not sure about here. The loop will work correctly for each seperate invocation of the appropriate continuation. The first time you call foo i is 0. The second time i is 1. If foo ever invokes the full continuations that it captured at one of these points, then i will go back to whatever it was when that continuation was captured. All of this seems like reasonable behavior to me. In the general case our optimizer will not be able to downgrad i from a P to an I register anyway, as foo could mess with $CALLER::i or whatever. Thus, I am not sure that I by your argument. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Continuations, basic blocks, loops and register allocation
Leo~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:37:04 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leo~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 09:23:24 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i = 0 lp: foo() inc i if i 10 goto lp There is one thing I am not sure about here. The loop will work correctly for each seperate invocation of the appropriate continuation. No. Imagine, foo() is not a simple function anymore. Someone e.g. Jens Rieks[1], discovers that the algoritm is simpler implemented with continuations. So inside foo() the return continuation of foo() is copyied, stored elsewhere, passed along to another function, and that one now suddenly returns via this continuation to your loop. If this invocation of the continuation would restore registers suddenly the loop will become an infinite one, as Ci is always restored to zero. [1] Have a look at runtime/parrot/library/Streams/Sub.imc leo I disagree with that analysis. Let us consider the actual effect of such an implementation. First iteration i = 0; foo(); #at this point a continuation created capturing i=0, promoted by Jens and stuff happens #eventually it is invoked, restoring i=0 i++; #i = 1 foo(); #at this point a NEW return continuation is created capturing i=1; promoted by Jens... #eventually it is invoked, restoring i=1 i++; #i = 2 ... Thus every single invocation of foo will have an i one greater than the last. If foo's algorithm had an error and did not use the new return continuation to recreate its internal continuation each time, then you would be correct. But that would be a bug in the implementation of foo. As the following code #set up for foo foo() #set other stuff for foo foo() would be an infinite loop alway returning immediately after the first invocation of foo. I looked at Sub.imc and think it would work because write always creates a new Continuation for each invocation of write. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: [PROPOSAL] for a new calling scheme
Dan~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:22:23 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: An updated PDD 03 is in the repository. It's clear on what the caller populates, what the callee sees, and what happens to all the different registers. At line 72, Note that fact if a return continuation object is created explicitly, rather than by an invocation op, what is the remainder of this sentence? Thanks, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Continuations, basic blocks, loops and register allocation
Dan~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 12:29:19 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 11:52 AM -0500 11/16/04, Matt Fowles wrote: Leo~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:37:04 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Leo~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 09:23:24 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i = 0 lp: foo() inc i if i 10 goto lp There is one thing I am not sure about here. The loop will work correctly for each seperate invocation of the appropriate continuation. No. Imagine, foo() is not a simple function anymore. Someone e.g. Jens Rieks[1], discovers that the algoritm is simpler implemented with continuations. So inside foo() the return continuation of foo() is copyied, stored elsewhere, passed along to another function, and that one now suddenly returns via this continuation to your loop. If this invocation of the continuation would restore registers suddenly the loop will become an infinite one, as Ci is always restored to zero. [1] Have a look at runtime/parrot/library/Streams/Sub.imc leo I disagree with that analysis. You would, however, in this case be incorrect. The loop variable must have a backing store outside of the register set. The contents of registers must be assumed to be unreliable when a continuation is continued. If we declare that they are put back into the state they were when the continuation was taken, which is reasonable though not required, the values of non-reference type registers (ints and floats) will be reset. The rference type registers (strings and PMCs) will also be reset so the pointers to the string/pmc structs will be what they were when the continuation was taken, but as they are references the referred-to thing may have changed and the changed value will be seen. I am having trouble in that I agree with what you are saying, but I am coming to a different conclusion. I think that foo would create a new continuation (from it return continuation) each time it is called, and thus things below it on the call stack would be unaffected by its own internal continuation tricks (assuming for the moment that registers are put back into place by continuations). Since both you and Leo are arguing against me here, it seems like that I am wrong, but I would like to figure out exactly why I am wrong so that I can correct my train of thought in the future. Thanks, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: Continuations, basic blocks, loops and register allocation
Leo~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 18:32:07 +0100, Leopold Toetsch [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt Fowles wrote: I disagree with that analysis. Let us consider the actual effect of such an implementation. First iteration i = 0; foo(); #at this point a continuation created capturing i=0, promoted by Jens and stuff happens #eventually it is invoked, restoring i=0 i++; #i = 1 foo(); #at this point a NEW return continuation is created capturing That would work if there is a one to one representation of the invoation of foo() an it's continuation. But no one guarantees that. I suppose that what I am arguing is that anyone who does not maintain such a one-to-one representation (at least from the perspective of code calling foo()); full well deserves what they get. They are restoring the execution to an earlier state by invoking an old continuation. If the earlier state called them again the first time, they should probably expect the earlier state to call them again the second time. Unless they have some specific knowledge that the earlier state will change it behavior (because things in the heap have changed), there should be no expectation for it to. Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: [PROPOSAL] for a new calling scheme
Dan~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:00:39 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 12:56 PM -0500 11/16/04, Matt Fowles wrote: At line 72, Note that fact if a return continuation object is created explicitly, rather than by an invocation op, what is the remainder of this sentence? Now checked into CVS. Earlier in that same paragraph you state that registers 16-31 will be set To which groups of registers are you referring, P or (I,S,P, and N)? I don't mean to be trouble some, I am just trying to make sure it is clear and I understand it. Thanks, Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
Re: [PROPOSAL] for a new calling scheme
Dan~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:14:00 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 1:11 PM -0500 11/16/04, Matt Fowles wrote: Dan~ On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:00:39 -0500, Dan Sugalski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: At 12:56 PM -0500 11/16/04, Matt Fowles wrote: At line 72, Note that fact if a return continuation object is created explicitly, rather than by an invocation op, what is the remainder of this sentence? Now checked into CVS. Earlier in that same paragraph you state that registers 16-31 will be set To which groups of registers are you referring, P or (I,S,P, and N)? All of them. Clarification on its way in. Thanks, I think I have run out of nits Matt -- Computer Science is merely the post-Turing Decline of Formal Systems Theory. -???
