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Re: [alexandria-devel] Moving to next stage
by Attila Lendvai 25 Jun '07

25 Jun '07

> > on this note, we should/could add a REMOVE-FROM-ALIST and their > > DELETE-FROM... counterparts. > > I agree. i've added the missing delete-from-plist and their modify macro variants. i'm not sure about the alist versions, though: what should be their api? plists are usually used with symbols as keys, so using #'eq for comparison is ok, but alists are mostly addressed by non-symbols, so the (alist &rest keys) api is not too useful without a :test argument. because of this i've skipped them for now. > > i personally would be ok if they worked so that when called with NIL > > they would always return T (so NIL would be taken as an empty > > sequence). and if we added FIRST-ELEMENT/LAST-ELEMENT then people > > could use them to test if a sequence start and/or ends with NIL as an > > element. > > Would STARTS-WITH-SUBSEQ and ENDS-WITH-SUBSEQ work for you? yep, i've added them. everybody, feel free to excercise your veto rights even with an UNDO patch, i won't take it as an offense! this is how the Alexandria project is planned to work... -- attila

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[Fwd: Re: [alexandria-devel] Moving to next stage]
by Nikodemus Siivola 13 Jun '07

13 Jun '07

Oops, forgot to CC the list. -------- Original Message -------- From: - Wed Jun 13 14:31:03 2007 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-ID: <466FD55D.3040703(a)random-state.net> Date: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 14:30:37 +0300 From: Nikodemus Siivola <nikodemus(a)random-state.net> User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (Macintosh/20070326) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Attila Lendvai <attila.lendvai(a)gmail.com> Subject: Re: [alexandria-devel] Moving to next stage References: <466D1F29.2030908(a)random-state.net> <b54b34af0706130043v7fe27976lf05e254d6abb8b6c(a)mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <b54b34af0706130043v7fe27976lf05e254d6abb8b6c(a)mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Attila Lendvai wrote: > i'm missing some kind of collecting macro, to avoid the way too much > used push/nreverse pattern. this macro should preferably use such > names that do not conflict with ITERATE. > > i've proposed one some time back, but it's not satisfying enough for > inclusion as is. I'm open to proposals, but I have the hunch that collecting macros end up being either small languages (and thus sort of outside Alexandria's scope) or not general enough. > i would like to bring up the possible removal of SANS (again. it's not > that i hate it, but it's a broken window in my eyes... :) SANS is a > REMOVE-FROM-PLIST which is a much more intuitive name and matches the > CL naming convention of REMOVE/DELETE. Possible. I would personally be happy to retain it as a synonym / alternative API. > on this note, we should/could add a REMOVE-FROM-ALIST and their > DELETE-FROM... counterparts. I agree. > then we could define setf expanders for them, no idea on their names > though. REMOVEF-FROM-PLIST sounds silly, REMOVE-FROM-PLIST! is > (unfortunately) not used much in CL and if there were a > DELETE-FROM-PLIST! then DELETE-FROM-PLIST would be confusingly > suggesting that it has no side effects. hm, seems like i have more > questions then answers here... You mean modify-macros? REMOVE-FROM-PLISTF, etc. > another one that bothers me is the STARTS-WITH/ENDS-WITH. currently > they check for the first and last element of a sequence. unfortunately > it can't be clearly made to work so that it can check both for single > elements and sequences (because NIL is both of them) unless we agree > on something about NIL and document it. but on the other hand, most of > the time (this may be subjective) such a STARTS-WITH/ENDS-WITH is > needed that works with sequences, so i usually end up shadowing them. > > i personally would be ok if they worked so that when called with NIL > they would always return T (so NIL would be taken as an empty > sequence). and if we added FIRST-ELEMENT/LAST-ELEMENT then people > could use them to test if a sequence start and/or ends with NIL as an > element. Would STARTS-WITH-SUBSEQ and ENDS-WITH-SUBSEQ work for you? Cheers, -- Nikodemus

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[alexandria-devel] Moving to next stage
by Nikodemus Siivola 13 Jun '07

13 Jun '07

I think Alexandria is soon ready to move to next stage: dropping the things that we cannot agree on. My TODO list before that includes just a few cleanups and documentation tweak (that can be probably best done in parallel with the dropping), and adding three more functions: MAP-COMBINATIONS, -PERMUTATIONS, and -DERANGEMENTS, which I'll merge as soon as I find my MAP-DERANGEMENTS (missing in action, but I know I have it.) Does anyone else think there is something significant missing? After we feel that we're as complete as we're likely to get in short order, I propose the following work order: 1. Hash over everything we have, one-by-one: * Vetos, dropping the things we don't agree on or are feeling unsure about. (Eg. I'm not sure the statistical stuff belongs in Alexandria: is it "good enough" for real statistical work? If not, then we should drop it because people really needing it will just need to shadow it, and others don't care.) * Checking that the documentation is complete enough. * Checking that the tests are complete enough. * Checking that the API is Common Lispy enough: :START & :END arguments, etc. * Checking that the API is future-proof enough: not grabbing names that might better serve other purposes, not using &OPTIONAL arguments if we may end up wanting to later add &KEY arguments, etc. * Checking that we're not defining something that should be a generic function as function. * Checking that functions have their "obvious" companion functions: REMOVE-FOO, REMOVE-FOO-IF, REMOVE-FOO-IF-NOT, DELETE-FOO, etc. * Fixing as necessary. ...this is going to take a fair while, so the sooner we get to it the better -- but similarly it doesn't make a real difference if we start a week or few later then sooner. 2. Make the nickname ALEXANDRIA conditional on there not being an ALEXANDRIA.X[.Y] with X greater then 1. 3. Wrap it up as ALEXANDRIA.1.BETA.1, and put it up for public review (month or two.) If there are comments, attend to them and repeat the beta cycle 5. Rename it as ALEXANDRIA.1, and rest on our laurels. I futher propose that the stuff we drop goes in BABEL package, which is doesn't make any guarantees about anything -- just a grab-bag of stuff that doesn't fit in Alexandria, and doesn't (yet) have an obvious home elsewhere. Cheers, -- Nikodemus

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[alexandria-devel] Signalling simple-errors
by Stefan Lang 06 May '07

06 May '07

Hi, Standard CL provides with the ERROR function a convenient way to signal simple-errors, but (unless I've overlooked something) things get verbose for simple-error subclasses. E.g. (define-condition my-error (simple-error) ((arg :initarg :arg :initform nil))) (error 'my-error :arg "foo" :format-control "Something is wrong: ~A" :format-arguments (list xyz)) To tidy things up, I've written the SERROR function: (serror 'my-error :arg "foo" "Something is wrong: ~A" xyz) (serror 'my-error "Something is wrong: ~A" xyz) (serror 'my-error "Something is wrong.") Of course I'm sending this because I'd like to have it in Alexandria :-) Thanks, Stefan

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[alexandria-devel] A clean-room implementation of FILTER-IF from Paul Graham's "On Lisp."
by Samium Gromoff 23 Apr '07

23 Apr '07

Good day, perhaps the function below meets the Alexandria's standards for conservativeness/usefulness: (defun filter-if (fn &rest sequences) (labels ((iterate (acc sequences) (if (notany #'null sequences) (iterate (if-let ((testval (apply fn (mapcar #'car sequences)))) (cons testval acc) acc) (mapcar #'cdr sequences)) acc))) (nreverse (iterate nil sequences)))) The idea, but not the implementation, was taken from Paul Graham's book "On Lisp". Also, i cannot come up with a good docstring, so such one would be appreciated. regards, Samium Gromoff

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[alexandria-devel] Hi
by Faré 27 Mar '07

27 Mar '07

Hi, I was thinking about putting some order in my own fare-utils, and maybe merge with arnesi, cl-utilities, and so many other libraries. Nikodemus told me to look for Alexandria. It would make a good start. But there should really be another layered project to provide all the basic algorithms to CL: fifos, various trees, iterators, comparators, tries, hashes, sorting, pure and impure containers, etc. Although we possibly want to layer that on top of a good macroexpansion and higher-order module system a la MzScheme. Notes, reading the darcs source: * I think if-let* would be better if it did short-circuit logic and stopped computing and binding at the first NIL * in sequences.lisp, shouldn't suffle be shuffle? * shouldn't emptyp be a gf? * in symbols, what does ensure-symbol do that intern alone doesn't do??? * there should be a shortcut format-keyword for format-symbol :keyword * tests should probably be in a separate directory, one per file, mimicking the main source files. Things I would really like from arnesi * compose is done better in arnesi. a multiple-value version would be even better (as a replacement or a distinct function). * I *really* would like to see the flow-control parts of arnesi there. Except that I prefer (block NIL ...) to (block while ...), and with* should have a different name. * ensure-list, ensure-cons, remove-keywords * eval-always (called eval-now in fare-utils) Things that might or not be good, some of which I have in fare-utils or that are in use at ITA: * the "optimizing" strcat (that normalizes to base-string if possible) * nconcf, append1 append1f (i.e add one element at the end). * many variants along the line of clisp's with-collect, arnesi's with-collector, etc. * my DBG macro, for print-based debugging. * with-input, with-output, for wrapping a stream-using function like format does with its internals (i.e NIL means returning the resulting string). * defconstant-equal, defconstant-equalp, defconstant-unequal, defconstant-eqx -- to specify the constantness that matters. * alist->hash-table and hash-table->alist * with-accessors (with optional prefix) as a replacement for with-slots. * accessors-equal to help compare objects slot-by-slot * plist->alist * association * defun-inline * define-values-modify-macro define-values-post-modify-macro post-incf post-decf * multiple-value-quote (only useful if we also provide standard abbreviated names -- which would make sense *a different package*) * symbol-macro-expansion That's all for today. [ François-René ÐVB Rideau | Reflection&Cybernethics | http://fare.tunes.org ] A long time ago, someone in the Lisp industry told me it was poor form quote people; it suggests that they lack value. But I don't want to get bound up into that argument, so let's just achieve closure by agreeing that the point is that you can feel free to point people to my earlier pointer, which works as a reference for certain reference works that are particularly on point in their pointers about pointer references. Did you copy all that? -- Kent M Pitman Take my advice, I for one have always believed in share and share alike. I'm constant on that. If I were to modify my argument, however slightly, those that depend on me (and I get calls all the time, and I return most of them), might accuse me of corruption. I may have no class, but at least my values haven't changed. -- Jrm

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[alexandria-devel] Fix when-let docstring
by Stefan Lang 18 Mar '07

18 Mar '07

Hi, The docstring for when-let mentions THEN-FORM and ELSE-FORM, seems like it was copied from if-let :-) The attached patch fixes this. Stefan

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[alexandria-devel] darcs patch: Fix for MAKE-GENSYM-LIST where it fails because no def...
by Daniel White 14 Feb '07

14 Feb '07

Sat Feb 10 18:48:34 EST 2007 Daniel White <dwhite.dex(a)gmail.com> * Fix for MAKE-GENSYM-LIST where it fails because no default value for optional parameter x is provided

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[alexandria-devel] are relevant OnLispisms welcome?
by Samium Gromoff 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

There is a useful subset of the macros/functions in the Graham's "On Lisp" which at least superficially appear to match the criteria for becoming part of alexandria. Therefore the question: whether an effort of identification of those and bringing them here would be considered positive? regards, Samium Gromoff

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[alexandria-devel] concatenate-symbol
by Attila Lendvai 20 Nov '06

20 Nov '06

i've got this ready to be pushed and i suggest this for inclusion and/or discussion: (defun concatenate-symbol (&rest args) "A DWIM symbol concatenate: Args will be converted to string and be concatenated to form the resulting symbol with one exception: when a package is encountered then it is stored as the target package to use at intern. If there was no package among the args then the symbol-package of the first symbol encountered will be used. If there are neither packages nor symbols among the args then the result will be interned into the current package at the time of calling." (let* ((package nil) (symbol-name (string-upcase (with-output-to-string (str) (dolist (arg args) (typecase arg (string (write-string arg str)) (package (setf package arg)) (symbol (unless package (setf package (symbol-package arg))) (write-string (symbol-name arg) str)) (integer (write-string (princ-to-string arg) str)) (character (write-char arg) str) (t (error "Cannot convert argument ~S to symbol" arg)))))))) (if package (intern symbol-name package) (intern symbol-name)))) -- - attila "- The truth is that I've been too considerate, and so became unintentionally cruel... - I understand. - No, you don't understand! We don't speak the same language!" (Ingmar Bergman - Smultronstället)

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