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A Guide to the S-Lang Language (v2.2.4)
John E. Davis <www.jedsoft.org>
Mar 28, 2011
____________________________________________________________
1. Preface
S-Lang is an interpreted language that was designed from the start to
be easily embedded into a program to provide it with a powerful
extension language. Examples of programs that use S-Lang as an
extension language include the jed text editor and the slrn
newsreader. Although S-Lang does not exist as a separate application,
it is distributed with a quite capable program called slsh (``slang-
shell'') that embeds the interpreter and allows one to execute S-Lang
scripts, or simply experiment with S-Lang at an interactive prompt.
Many of the the examples in this document are presented in the context
of one of the above applications.
S-Lang is also a programmer's library that permits a programmer to
develop sophisticated platform-independent software. In addition to
providing the S-Lang interpreter, the library provides facilities for
screen management, keymaps, low-level terminal I/O, etc. However, this
document is concerned only with the extension language and does not
address these other features of the S-Lang library. For information
about the other components of the library, the reader is referred to
the S-Lang Library C Programmer's Guide.
1.1. A Brief History of S-Lang
I first began working on S-Lang sometime during the fall of 1992. At
that time I was writing a text editor (jed), which I wanted to endow
with a macro language. It occurred to me that an application-
independent language that could be embedded into the editor would
prove more useful because I could envision embedding it into other
programs. As a result, S-Lang was born.
S-Lang was originally a stack language that supported a postscript-
like syntax. For that reason, I named it S-Lang, where the S was
supposed to emphasize its stack-based nature. About a year later, I
began to work on a preparser that would allow one unfamiliar with
stack based languages to make use of a more traditional infix syntax.
Currently, the syntax of the language resembles C, nevertheless some
postscript-like features still remain, e.g., the `%' character is
still used as a comment delimiter.
1.2. Acknowledgements
Since I first released S-Lang, I have received a lot feedback about
the library and the language from many people. This has given me the
opportunity and pleasure to interact with a number of people to make
the library portable and easy to use. In particular, I would like to
thank the following individuals:
Luchesar Ionkov for his comments and criticisms of the syntax of the
language. He was the person who made me realize that the low-level
byte-code engine should be totally type-independent. He also improved
the tokenizer and preparser and impressed upon me that the language
needed a grammar.
Mark Olesen for his many patches to various aspects of the library and
his support on AIX. He also contributed a lot to the pre-processing
(SLprep) routines.
John Burnell for the OS/2 port of the video and keyboard routines. He
also made value suggestions regarding the interpreter interface.
Darrel Hankerson for cleaning up and unifying some of the code and the
makefiles.
Dominik Wujastyk who was always willing to test new releases of the
library.
Michael Elkins for his work on the curses emulation.
Hunter Goatley, Andy Harper, Martin P.J. Zinser, and Jouk Jansen for
their VMS support.
Dave Sims and Chin Huang for Windows 95 and Windows NT support, and
Dino Sangoi for the Windows DLL support.
I am also grateful to many other people who send in bug-reports, bug-
fixes, little enhancements, and suggestions, and so on. Without such
community involvement, S-Lang would not be as well-tested and stable
as it is. Finally, I would like to thank my wife for her support and
understanding while I spent long weekend hours developing the library.
2. Introduction
S-Lang is a powerful interpreted language that may be embedded into an
application to make the application extensible. This enables the
application to be used in ways not envisioned by the programmer, thus
providing the application with much more flexibility and power.
Examples of applications that take advantage of the interpreter in
this way include the jed editor and the slrn newsreader.
2.1. slsh -- The S-Lang shell
The S-Lang distribution contains a standalone application called slsh
that may be used for writing S-Lang scripts and full-blown S-Lang
based applications. For example, the author has used slsh to create a
mediacenter for his home entertainment system that integrates internet
radio and tv, podcasts, digital pictures and video, CDs, and so forth.
The use of slsh in such non-interactive modes is discussed in the
chapter on ``slsh''.
slsh also may be used interactively and has full access to all
components of the S-Lang interpreter. With features such as
customizable command-line editing, history recall and completion, slsh
is a convenient environment for learning and using the language. In
fact, as you are reading this manual, it is recommended that you use
slsh in its interactive mode as an aid to understanding the language.
While a standard S-Lang installation includes slsh, some some binary
distributions package slsh separately from the S-Lang library, and as
such must be installed separately. For example, on Debian Linux it can
be installed via
apt-get install slsh
When called without arguments, slsh will start in interactive mode by
issuing a (customizable) slsh> prompt and waits for input. While most
of the time one would enter S-Lang statements at the prompt, slsh also
accepts some other commands, most notably help:
slsh> help
Most commands must end in a semi-colon.
If a command begins with '!', then the command is passed to the shell.
Examples: !ls, !pwd, !cd foo, ...
Special commands:
help <help-topic>
apropos <something>
start_log( <optional-log-file> );
start logging input to a file (default is slsh.log)
stop_log();
stop logging input
save_input (<optional-file>);
save all previous input to a file (default: slsh.log)
quit;
Although the language normally requires variables to be declared
before use, it is not necessary to do so when using slsh
interactively. For example, in this document you will see examples
such as
variable x = [1:10];
variable y = sin (x^2);
At the slsh command line, the use of the variable keyword in such
statements is optional:
slsh> x = [1:10]; y = sin(x^2);
As the above example suggests, one use of slsh is as a sophisticated
calculator. For example,
slsh> sin (1.24) + 3*cos (1.3*PI);
-0.817572
This is especially true when combined with modules, e.g.,
slsh> require ("fits");
slsh> require ("histogram");
slsh> tbl = fit_read_table ("evt1a.fits");
slsh> engrid = [min(tbl.energy):max(energy):#1024];
slsh> spectrum = hist1d (tbl.energy[where(tbl.status==0)], engrid);
In this example, the fits module was used to read data from a binary
file called evt1a.fits, and the histogram module was used to bin the
data in the energy column into a histogram to create a spectrum. The
expression involving where filters the data by accepting only those
energy values whose status is set to 0. The fits and histogram modules
are not distributed with S-Lang but may be obtained separately-- see
http://www.jedsoft.org/slang/modules/ for links to them. For more
information about modules, see the ``Modules'' chapter in this docu-
ment.
For more information about using slsh, see the chapter on ``slsh''.
2.2. Language Features
The language features both global and local variables, branching and
looping constructs, user-defined functions, structures, datatypes, and
arrays. In addition, there is limited support for pointer types. The
concise array syntax rivals that of commercial array-based numerical
computing environments.
2.3. Data Types and Operators
The language provides built-in support for string, integer (signed and
unsigned long and short), double precision floating point, and double
precision complex numbers. In addition, it supports user defined
structure types, multi-dimensional array types, lists, and associative
arrays. To facilitate the construction of sophisticated data
structures such as linked lists and trees, the language also includes
a ``reference'' type. The reference type provides much of the same
flexibility as pointers in other languages. Finally, applications
embedding the interpreter may also provide special application
specific types, such as the Mark_Type that the jed editor provides.
The language provides standard arithmetic operations such as addition,
subtraction, multiplication, and division. It also provides support
for modulo arithmetic as well as operations at the bit level, e.g.,
exclusive-or. Any binary or unary operator may be extended to work
with any data type, including user-defined types. For example, the
addition operator (+) has been extended to work between string types
to permit string concatenation.
The binary and unary operators work transparently with array types.
For example, if a and b are arrays, then a + b produces an array whose
elements are the result of element by element addition of a and b.
This permits one to do vector operations without explicitly looping
over the array indices.
2.4. Statements and Functions
The S-Lang language supports several types of looping constructs and
conditional statements. The looping constructs include while,
do...while, for, forever, loop, foreach, and _for. The conditional
statements include if, if-then-else, and ifnot.
User defined functions may be defined to return zero, one, or more
values. Functions that return zero values are similar to
``procedures'' in languages such as PASCAL. The local variables of a
function are always created on a stack allowing one to create
recursive functions. Parameters to a function are always passed by
value and never by reference. However, the language supports a
reference data type that allows one to simulate pass by reference.
Unlike many interpreted languages, S-Lang allows functions to be
dynamically loaded (function autoloading). It also provides constructs
specifically designed for error handling and recovery as well as
debugging aids (e.g., function tracebacks).
Functions and variables may be declared as private belonging to a
namespace associated with the compilation unit that defines the
function or variable. The ideas behind the namespace implementation
stem from the C language and should be quite familiar to any one
familiar with C.
2.5. Error Handling
The S-Lang language has a try/throw/catch/finally exception model
whose semantics are similar to that of other languages. Users may also
extend the exception class hierarchy with user-defined exceptions. The
ERROR_BLOCK based exception model of S-Lang 1.x is still supported but
deprecated.
2.6. Run-Time Library
Functions that compose the S-Lang run-time library are called
intrinsics. Examples of S-Lang intrinsic functions available to every
S-Lang application include string manipulation functions such as
strcat, strchop, and strcmp. The S-Lang library also provides
mathematical functions such as sin, cos, and tan; however, not all
applications enable the use of these intrinsics. For example, to
conserve memory, the 16 bit version of the jed editor does not provide
support for any mathematics other than simple integer arithmetic,
whereas other versions of the editor do support these functions.
Most applications embedding the languages will also provide a set of
application specific intrinsic functions. For example, the jed editor
adds over 100 application specific intrinsic functions to the
language. Consult your application specific documentation to see what
additional intrinsics are supported.
Operating systems that support dynamic linking allow a slang
interpreter to dynamically link additional libraries of intrinsic
functions and variables into the interpreter. Such loadable objects
are called modules. A separate chapter of this manual is devoted to
this important feature.
2.7. Input/Output
The language supports C-like stdio input/output functions such as
fopen, fgets, fputs, and fclose. In addition it provides two
functions, message and error, for writing to the standard output
device and standard error. Specific applications may provide other
I/O mechanisms, e.g., the jed editor supports I/O to files via the
editor's buffers.
2.8. Obtaining more information about S-Lang
Comprehensive information about the library may be obtained via the
World Wide Web from http://www.jedsoft.org/slang/. In particular see
http://www.jedsoft.org/slang/download.html for downloading the latest
version of the library.
Users with generic questions about the interpreter are encouraged to
post questions to the Usenet newsgroup alt.lang.s-lang. More specific
questions relating to the use of S-Lang within some application may be
better answered in an application-specific forum. For example, users
with questions about using S-Lang as embedded in the jed editor are
more likely to be answered in the comp.editors newsgroup or on the jed
mailing list. Similarly users with questions concerning slrn will find
news.software.readers to be a valuable source of information.
Developers who have embedded the interpreter are encouraged to join
the S-Lang mailing list. To subscribe to the list or just browse the
archives, visit http://www.jedsoft.org/slang/mailinglists.html.
3. Overview of the Language
This purpose of this section is to give the reader a feel for the S-
Lang language, its syntax, and its capabilities. The information and
examples presented in this section should be sufficient to provide the
reader with the necessary background to understand the rest of the
document.
3.1. Variables and Functions
S-Lang is different from many other interpreted languages in the sense
that all variables and functions must be declared before they can be
used.
Variables are declared using the variable keyword, e.g.,
variable x, y, z;
declares three variables, x, y, and z. Note the semicolon at the end
of the statement. All S-Lang statements must end in a semicolon.
Unlike compiled languages such as C, it is not necessary to specify
the data type of a S-Lang variable. The data type of a S-Lang variable
is determined upon assignment. For example, after execution of the
statements
x = 3;
y = sin (5.6);
z = "I think, therefore I am.";
x will be an integer, y will be a double, and z will be a string. In
fact, it is even possible to re-assign x to a string:
x = "x was an integer, but now is a string";
Finally, one can combine variable declarations and assignments in the
same statement:
variable x = 3, y = sin(5.6), z = "I think, therefore I am.";
Most functions are declared using the define keyword. A simple example
is
define compute_average (x, y)
{
variable s = x + y;
return s / 2.0;
}
which defines a function that simply computes the average of two num-
bers and returns the result. This example shows that a function con-
sists of three parts: the function name, a parameter list, and the
function body.
The parameter list consists of a comma separated list of variable
names. It is not necessary to declare variables within a parameter
list; they are implicitly declared. However, all other local variables
used in the function must be declared. If the function takes no
parameters, then the parameter list must still be present, but empty:
define go_left_5 ()
{
go_left (5);
}
The last example is a function that takes no arguments and returns no
value. Some languages such as PASCAL distinguish such objects from
functions that return values by calling these objects procedures. How-
ever, S-Lang, like C, does not make such a distinction.
The language permits recursive functions, i.e., functions that call
themselves. The way to do this in S-Lang is to first declare the
function using the form:
define function-name ();
It is not necessary to declare a list of parameters when declaring a
function in this way.
Perhaps the most famous example of a recursive function is the
factorial function. Here is how to implement it using S-Lang:
define factorial (); % declare it for recursion
define factorial (n)
{
if (n < 2) return 1;
return n * factorial (n - 1);
}
This example also shows how to mix comments with code. S-Lang uses the
`%' character to start a comment and all characters from the comment
character to the end of the line are ignored.
3.2. Qualifiers
S-Lang 2.1 introduced support for function qualifiers as a mechanism
for passing additional information to a function. For example,
consider a plotting application with a function
define plot (x, y)
{
variable linestyle = qualifier ("linestyle", "solid");
variable color = qualifier ("color", "black");
sys_set_color (color);
sys_set_linestyle (linestyle);
sys_plot (x,y);
}
Here the functions sys_set_linestyle, sys_set_color, and sys_plot are
hypothetical low-level functions that perform the actual work. This
function may be called simply as
x = [0:10:0.1];
plot (x, sin(x));
to produce a solid black line connecting the points. Through the use
of qualifiers, the color or linestyle may be specified, e.g,,
plot (x, sin(x); linestyle="dashed");
would produce a ``dashed'' black curve, whereas
plot (x, sin(x); linestyle="dotted", color="blue");
would produce a blue ``dotted'' one.
3.3. Strings
Perhaps the most appealing feature of any interpreted language is that
it frees the user from the responsibility of memory management. This
is particularly evident when contrasting how S-Lang handles string
variables with a lower level language such as C. Consider a function
that concatenates three strings. An example in S-Lang is:
define concat_3_strings (a, b, c)
{
return strcat (a, b, c);
}
This function uses the built-in strcat function for concatenating two
or more strings. In C, the simplest such function would look like:
char *concat_3_strings (char *a, char *b, char *c)
{
unsigned int len;
char *result;
len = strlen (a) + strlen (b) + strlen (c);
if (NULL == (result = (char *) malloc (len + 1)))
exit (1);
strcpy (result, a);
strcat (result, b);
strcat (result, c);
return result;
}
Even this C example is misleading since none of the issues of memory
management of the strings has been dealt with. The S-Lang language
hides all these issues from the user.
Binary operators have been defined to work with the string data type.
In particular the + operator may be used to perform string
concatenation. That is, one can use the + operator as an alternative
to strcat:
define concat_3_strings (a, b, c)
{
return a + b + c;
}
See the section on ``Strings'' for more information about string vari-
ables.
3.4. Referencing and Dereferencing
The unary prefix operator, &, may be used to create a reference to an
object, which is similar to a pointer in other languages. References
are commonly used as a mechanism to pass a function as an argument to
another function as the following example illustrates:
define compute_functional_sum (funct)
{
variable i, s;
s = 0;
for (i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
s += (@funct)(i);
}
return s;
}
variable sin_sum = compute_functional_sum (&sin);
variable cos_sum = compute_functional_sum (&cos);
Here, the function compute_functional_sum applies the function speci-
fied by the parameter funct to the first 10 integers and returns the
sum. The two statements following the function definition show how the
sin and cos functions may be used.
Note the @ operator in the definition of compute_functional_sum. It is
known as the dereference operator and is the inverse of the reference
operator.
Another use of the reference operator is in the context of the fgets
function. For example,
define read_nth_line (file, n)
{
variable fp, line;
fp = fopen (file, "r");
while (n > 0)
{
if (-1 == fgets (&line, fp))
return NULL;
n--;
}
return line;
}
uses the fgets function to read the nth line of a file. In particu-
lar, a reference to the local variable line is passed to fgets, and
upon return line will be set to the character string read by fgets.
Finally, references may be used as an alternative to multiple return
values by passing information back via the parameter list. The
example involving fgets presented above provided an illustration of
this. Another example is
define set_xyz (x, y, z)
{
@x = 1;
@y = 2;
@z = 3;
}
variable X, Y, Z;
set_xyz (&X, &Y, &Z);
which, after execution, results in X set to 1, Y set to 2, and Z set
to 3. A C programmer will note the similarity of set_xyz to the fol-
lowing C implementation:
void set_xyz (int *x, int *y, int *z)
{
*x = 1;
*y = 2;
*z = 3;
}
3.5. Arrays
The S-Lang language supports multi-dimensional arrays of all
datatypes. For example, one can define arrays of references to
functions as well as arrays of arrays. Here are a few examples of
creating arrays:
variable A = Int_Type [10];
variable B = Int_Type [10, 3];
variable C = [1, 3, 5, 7, 9];
The first example creates an array of 10 integers and assigns it to
the variable A. The second example creates a 2-d array of 30 integers
arranged in 10 rows and 3 columns and assigns the result to B. In the
last example, an array of 5 integers is assigned to the variable C.
However, in this case the elements of the array are initialized to the
values specified. This is known as an inline-array.
S-Lang also supports something called a range-array. An example of
such an array is
variable C = [1:9:2];
This will produce an array of 5 integers running from 1 through 9 in
increments of 2. Similarly [0:1:#1000] represents a 1000 element
floating point array of numbers running from 0 to 1 (inclusive).
Arrays are passed by reference to functions and never by value. This
permits one to write functions that can initialize arrays. For
example,
define init_array (a)
{
variable i, imax;
imax = length (a);
for (i = 0; i < imax; i++)
{
a[i] = 7;
}
}
variable A = Int_Type [10];
init_array (A);
creates an array of 10 integers and initializes all its elements to 7.
There are more concise ways of accomplishing the result of the
previous example. These include:
A = [7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7];
A = Int_Type [10]; A[[0:9]] = 7;
A = Int_Type [10]; A[*] = 7;
The second and third methods use an array of indices to index the
array A. In the second, the range of indices has been explicitly spec-
ified, whereas the third example uses a wildcard form. See chapter
``Arrays'' for more information about array indexing.
Although the examples have pertained to integer arrays, the fact is
that S-Lang arrays can be of any type, e.g.,
A = Double_Type [10];
B = Complex_Type [10];
C = String_Type [10];
D = Ref_Type [10];
create 10 element arrays of double, complex, string, and reference
types, respectively. The last example may be used to create an array
of functions, e.g.,
D[0] = &sin;
D[1] = &cos;
The language also defines unary, binary, and mathematical operations
on arrays. For example, if A and B are integer arrays, then A + B is
an array whose elements are the sum of the elements of A and B. A
trivial example that illustrates the power of this capability is
variable X, Y;
X = [0:2*PI:0.01];
Y = 20 * sin (X);
which is equivalent to the highly simplified C code:
double *X, *Y;
unsigned int i, n;
n = (2 * PI) / 0.01 + 1;
X = (double *) malloc (n * sizeof (double));
Y = (double *) malloc (n * sizeof (double));
for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
X[i] = i * 0.01;
Y[i] = 20 * sin (X[i]);
}
3.6. Lists
A S-Lang list is like an array except that it may contain a
heterogeneous collection of data, e.g.,
my_list = { 3, 2.9, "foo", &sin };
is a list of four objects, each with a different type. Like an array,
the elements of a list may be accessed via an index, e.g.,
x=my_list[2] will result in the assignment of "foo" to x. The most
important difference between an array and a list is that an array's
size is fixed whereas a list may grow or shrink. Algorithms that
require such a data structure may execute many times faster when a
list is used instead of an array.
3.7. Structures and User-Defined Types
A structure is similar to an array in the sense that it is a container
object. However, the elements of an array must all be of the same type
(or of Any_Type), whereas a structure is heterogeneous. As an example,
consider
variable person = struct
{
first_name, last_name, age
};
variable bill = @person;
bill.first_name = "Bill";
bill.last_name = "Clinton";
bill.age = 51;
In this example a structure consisting of the three fields has been
created and assigned to the variable person. Then an instance of this
structure has been created using the dereference operator and assigned
to bill. Finally, the individual fields of bill were initialized. This
is an example of an anonymous structure.
Note: S-Lang versions 2.1 and higher permit assignment statements
within the structure definition, e.g.,
variable bill = struct
{
first_name = "Bill",
last_name = "Clinton",
age = 51
};
A named structure is really a new data type and may be created using
the typedef keyword:
typedef struct
{
first_name, last_name, age
}
Person_Type;
variable bill = @Person_Type;
bill.first_name = "Bill";
bill.last_name = "Clinton";
bill.age = 51;
One advantage of creating a new type is that array elements of such
types are automatically initialized to instances of the type. For
example,
People = Person_Type [100];
People[0].first_name = "Bill";
People[1].first_name = "Hillary";
may be used to create an array of 100 such objects and initialize the
first_name fields of the first two elements. In contrast, the form
using an anonymous would require a separate step to instantiate the
array elements:
People = Struct_Type [100];
People[0] = @person;
People[0].first_name = "Bill";
People[1] = @person;
People[1].first_name = "Hillary";
Another big advantage of a user-defined type is that the binary and
unary operators may be overloaded onto such types. This is explained
in more detail below.
The creation and initialization of a structure may be facilitated by a
function such as
define create_person (first, last, age)
{
variable person = @Person_Type;
person.first_name = first;
person.last_name = last;
person.age = age;
return person;
}
variable Bill = create_person ("Bill", "Clinton", 51);
Other common uses of structures is the creation of linked lists,
binary trees, etc. For more information about these and other features
of structures, see the section on ``Linked Lists''.
3.8. Namespaces
The language supports namespaces that may be used to control the scope
and visibility of variables and functions. In addition to the global
or public namespace, each S-Lang source file or compilation unit has a
private or anonymous namespace associated with it. The private
namespace may be used to define symbols that are local to the
compilation unit and inaccessible from the outside. The language also
allows the creation of named (non-anonymous or static) namespaces that
permit access via the namespace operator. See the chapter on
``Namespaces'' for more information.
4. Data Types and Literal Constants
The current implementation of the S-Lang language permits up to 65535
distinct data types, including predefined data types such as integer
and floating point, as well as specialized application-specific data
types. It is also possible to create new data types in the language
using the typedef mechanism.
Literal constants are objects such as the integer 3 or the string
"hello". The actual data type given to a literal constant depends upon
the syntax of the constant. The following sections describe the syntax
of literals of specific data types.
4.1. Predefined Data Types
The current version of S-Lang defines integer, floating point,
complex, and string types. It also defines special purpose data types
such as Null_Type, DataType_Type, and Ref_Type. These types are
discussed below.
4.1.1. Integers
The S-Lang language supports both signed and unsigned characters,
short integer, long integer, and long long integer types. On most 32
bit systems, there is no difference between an integer and a long
integer; however, they may differ on 16 and 64 bit systems. Generally
speaking, on a 16 bit system, plain integers are 16 bit quantities
with a range of -32767 to 32767. On a 32 bit system, plain integers
range from -2147483648 to 2147483647.
An plain integer literal can be specified in one of several ways:
o As a decimal (base 10) integer consisting of the characters 0
through 9, e.g., 127. An integer specified this way cannot begin
with a leading 0. That is, 0127 is not the same as 127.
o Using hexadecimal (base 16) notation consisting of the characters 0
to 9 and A through F. The hexadecimal number must be preceded by
the characters 0x. For example, 0x7F specifies an integer using
hexadecimal notation and has the same value as decimal 127.
o In Octal notation using characters 0 through 7. The Octal number
must begin with a leading 0. For example, 0177 and 127 represent
the same integer.
o In Binary notation using characters 0 and 1 with the 0b prefix. For
example, 21 may be expressed in binary using 0b10101.
Short, long, long long, and unsigned types may be specified by using
the proper suffixes: L indicates that the integer is a long integer,
LL indicates a long long integer, h indicates that the integer is a
short integer, and U indicates that it is unsigned. For example, 1UL
specifies an unsigned long integer.
Finally, a character literal may be specified using a notation
containing a character enclosed in single quotes as 'a'. The value of
the character specified this way will lie in the range 0 to 256 and
will be determined by the ASCII value of the character in quotes. For
example,
i = '0';
assigns to i the character 48 since the '0' character has an ASCII
value of 48.
A ``wide'' character (unicode) may be specified using the form
'\x{y...y}' where y...y are hexadecimal digits. For example,
'\x{12F}' % Latin Small Letter I With Ogonek;
'\x{1D7BC}' % Mathematical Sans-Serif Bold Italic Small Sigma
Any integer may be preceded by a minus sign to indicate that it is a
negative integer.
4.1.2. Floating Point Numbers
Single and double precision floating point literals must contain
either a decimal point or an exponent (or both). Here are examples of
specifying the same double precision point number:
12. 12.0 12e0 1.2e1 120e-1 .12e2 0.12e2
Note that 12 is not a floating point number since it contains neither
a decimal point nor an exponent. In fact, 12 is an integer.
One may append the f character to the end of the number to indicate
that the number is a single precision literal. The following are all
single precision values:
12.f 12.0f 12e0f 1.2e1f 120e-1f .12e2f 0.12e2f
4.1.3. Complex Numbers
The language implements complex numbers as a pair of double precision
floating point numbers. The first number in the pair forms the real
part, while the second number forms the imaginary part. That is, a
complex number may be regarded as the sum of a real number and an
imaginary number.
Strictly speaking, the current implementation of the S-Lang does not
support generic complex literals. However, it does support imaginary
literals permitting a more generic complex number with a non-zero real
part to be constructed from the imaginary literal via addition of a
real number.
An imaginary literal is specified in the same way as a floating point
literal except that i or j is appended. For example,
12i 12.0i 12e0j
all represent the same imaginary number.
A more generic complex number may be constructed from an imaginary
literal via addition, e.g.,
3.0 + 4.0i
produces a complex number whose real part is 3.0 and whose imaginary
part is 4.0.
The intrinsic functions Real and Imag may be used to retrieve the real
and imaginary parts of a complex number, respectively.
4.1.4. Strings
A string literal must be enclosed in double quotes as in:
"This is a string".
As described below, the string literal may contain a suffix that spec-
ifies how the string is to be interpreted, e.g., a string literal such
as
"$HOME/.jedrc"$
with the '$' suffix will be subject to variable name expansion.
Although there is no imposed limit on the length of a string, single-
line string literals must be less than 256 characters in length. It is
possible to construct strings longer than this by string
concatenation, e.g.,
"This is the first part of a long string"
+ " and this is the second part"
S-Lang version 2.2 introduced support for multi-line string literals.
There are basic variants supported. The first makes use of the
backslash at the end of a line to indicate that the string is
continued onto the next line:
"This is a \
multi-line string. \
Note the presence of the \
backslash character at the end \
of each of the lines."
The second form of multiline string is delimited by the backquote
character (`) and does not require backslashes:
`This form does not
require backslash characters.
In fact, here the backslash
character \ has no special
meaning (unless given the ``Q' suffix`
Note that if a backquote is to appear in such a string, then it must
be doubled, as illustrated in the above example.
Any character except a newline (ASCII 10) or the null character (ASCII
0) may appear explicitly in a string literal. However, these
characters may embedded implicitly using the mechanism described
below.
The backslash character is a special character and is used to include
other special characters (such as a newline character) in the string.
The special characters recognized are:
\" -- double quote
\' -- single quote
\\ -- backslash
\a -- bell character (ASCII 7)
\t -- tab character (ASCII 9)
\n -- newline character (ASCII 10)
\e -- escape character (ASCII 27)
\xhh -- byte expressed in HEXADECIMAL notation
\ooo -- byte expressed in OCTAL notation
\dnnn -- byte expressed in DECIMAL
\u{h..h} -- the Unicode character U+h..h
\x{h..h} -- the Unicode character U+h..h [modal]
In the above table, h represents one of the HEXADECIMAL characters
from the set [0-9A-Fa-f]. It is important to understand the distinc-
tion between the \x{h..h} and \u{h..h} forms. When using in a string,
the \u form always expands to the corresponding UTF-8 sequence regard-
less of the UTF-8 mode. In contrast, when in non-UTF-8 mode, the \x
form expands to a byte when given two hex characters, or to the corre-
sponding UTF-8 sequence when used with three or more hex characters.
For example, to include the double quote character as part of the
string, it must be preceded by a backslash character, e.g.,
"This is a \"quote\"."
Similarly, the next example illustrates how a newline character may be
included:
"This is the first line\nand this is the second."
Alternatively, slang-2.2 or newer permits
`This is a "quote".`
`This is the first line
and this is the second.`
4.1.4.1. Suffixes
A string literal may be contain a suffix that specifies how the string
is to be interpreted. The suffix may consist of one or more of the
following characters:
R Backslash substitution will not be performed on the string.
This is the default when using back-quoted strings.
Q Backslash substitution will be performed on the string. This is
the default when using strings using the double-quote character.
B If this suffix is present, the string will be interpreted as a
binary string (BString_Type).
$ Variable name substitution will be performed on the string.
Not all combinations of the above controls characters are supported,
nor make sense. For example, a string with the suffix QR will cause a
parse-error because Q and R have opposing meanings.
4.1.4.1.1. The Q and R suffixes
These suffixes turn on and off backslash expansion. Unless the R
suffix is present, all double-quoted string literals will have
backslash substitution performed. By default, backslash expansion is
turned off for backquoted strings.
Sometimes it is desirable to turn off backslash expansion for double-
quoted strings. For example, pathnames on an MSDOS or Windows system
use the backslash character as a path separator. The R prefix turns
off backslash expansion, and as a result the following statements are
equivalent:
file = "C:\\windows\\apps\\slrn.rc";
file = "C:\\windows\\apps\\slrn.rc"Q;
file = "C:\windows\apps\slrn.rc"R;
file = `C:\windows\apps\slrn.rc`; % slang-2.2 and above
The only exception is that a backslash character is not permitted as
the last character of a string with the R suffix. That is,
string = "This is illegal\"R;
is not permitted. Without this exception, a string such as
string = "Some characters: \"R, S, T\"";
would not be parsed properly.
4.1.4.1.2. The $ suffix
If the string contains the $ suffix, then variable name expansion will
be performed upon names prefixed by a $ character occurring within the
string, e.g.,
"The value of X is $X and the value of Y is $Y"$.
with variable name substitution to be performed on the names X and Y.
Such strings may be used as a convenient alternative to the sprintf
function.
Name expansion is carried out according to the following rules: If the
string literal occurs in a function, and the name corresponds to a
variable local to the function, then the string representation of the
value of that variable will be substituted. Otherwise, if the name
corresponds to a variable that is local to the compilation unit (i.e.,
is declared as static or private), then its value's string
representation will be used. Otherwise, if the name corresponds to a
variable that exists as a global (public) then its value's string
representation will be substituted. If the above searches fail and the
name exists in the environment, then the value of the corresponding
environment variable will be used. Otherwise, the variable will
expand to the empty string.
Consider the following example:
private variable bar = "two";
putenv ("MYHOME=/home/baz");
define funct (foo)
{
variable bar = 1;
message ("file: $MYHOME/foo: garage=$MYGARAGE,bar=$bar"$);
}
When executed, this will produce the message:
file: /home/baz/foo: garage=,bar=1
assuming that MYGARAGE is not defined anywhere.
A name may be enclosed in braces. For example,
"${MYHOME}/foo: bar=${bar}"$
This is useful in cases when the name is followed immediately by other
characters that may be interpreted as part of the name, e.g.,
variable HELLO="Hello ";
message ("${HELLO}World"$);
will produce the message "Hello World".
4.1.5. Null_Type
Objects of type Null_Type can have only one value: NULL. About the
only thing that you can do with this data type is to assign it to
variables and test for equality with other objects. Nevertheless,
Null_Type is an important and extremely useful data type. Its main use
stems from the fact that since it can be compared for equality with
any other data type, it is ideal to represent the value of an object
which does not yet have a value, or has an illegal value.
As a trivial example of its use, consider
define add_numbers (a, b)
{
if (a == NULL) a = 0;
if (b == NULL) b = 0;
return a + b;
}
variable c = add_numbers (1, 2);
variable d = add_numbers (1, NULL);
variable e = add_numbers (1,);
variable f = add_numbers (,);
It should be clear that after these statements have been executed, c
will have a value of 3. It should also be clear that d will have a
value of 1 because NULL has been passed as the second parameter. One
feature of the language is that if a parameter has been omitted from a
function call, the variable associated with that parameter will be set
to NULL. Hence, e and f will be set to 1 and 0, respectively.
The Null_Type data type also plays an important role in the context of
structures.
4.1.6. Ref_Type
Objects of Ref_Type are created using the unary reference operator &.
Such objects may be dereferenced using the dereference operator @. For
example,
sin_ref = &sin;
y = (@sin_ref) (1.0);
creates a reference to the sin function and assigns it to sin_ref. The
second statement uses the dereference operator to call the function
that sin_ref references.
The Ref_Type is useful for passing functions as arguments to other
functions, or for returning information from a function via its
parameter list. The dereference operator may also used to create an
instance of a structure. For these reasons, further discussion of this
important type can be found in the section on ``Referencing
Variables''.
4.1.7. Array_Type, Assoc_Type, List_Type, and Struct_Type
Variables of type Array_Type, Assoc_Type, List_Type, and Struct_Type
are known as container objects. They are more complicated than the
simple data types discussed so far and each obeys a special syntax.
For these reasons they are discussed in a separate chapters.
4.1.8. DataType_Type Type
S-Lang defines a type called DataType_Type. Objects of this type have
values that are type names. For example, an integer is an object of
type Integer_Type. The literals of DataType_Type include:
Char_Type (signed character)
UChar_Type (unsigned character)
Short_Type (short integer)
UShort_Type (unsigned short integer)
Integer_Type (plain integer)
UInteger_Type (plain unsigned integer)
Long_Type (long integer)
ULong_Type (unsigned long integer)
LLong_Type (long long integer)
ULLong_Type (unsigned long long integer)
Float_Type (single precision real)
Double_Type (double precision real)
Complex_Type (complex numbers)
String_Type (strings, C strings)
BString_Type (binary strings)
Struct_Type (structures)
Ref_Type (references)
Null_Type (NULL)
Array_Type (arrays)
Assoc_Type (associative arrays/hashes)
List_Type (lists)
DataType_Type (data types)
as well as the names of any other types that an application defines.
The built-in function typeof returns the data type of its argument,
i.e., a DataType_Type. For instance typeof(7) returns Integer_Type and
typeof(Integer_Type) returns DataType_Type. One can use this function
as in the following example:
if (Integer_Type == typeof (x)) message ("x is an integer");
The literals of DataType_Type have other uses as well. One of the most
common uses of these literals is to create arrays, e.g.,
x = Complex_Type [100];
creates an array of 100 complex numbers and assigns it to x.
4.1.9. Boolean Type
Strictly speaking, S-Lang has no separate boolean type; rather it
represents boolean values as Char_Type objects. In particular, boolean
FALSE is equivalent to Char_Type 0, and TRUE as any non-zero Char_Type
value. Since the exact value of TRUE is unspecified, it is unnecessary
and even pointless to define TRUE and FALSE literals in S-Lang.
4.2. Typecasting: Converting from one Type to Another
Occasionally, it is necessary to convert from one data type to
another. For example, if you need to print an object as a string, it
may be necessary to convert it to a String_Type. The typecast function
may be used to perform such conversions. For example, consider
variable x = 10, y;
y = typecast (x, Double_Type);
After execution of these statements, x will have the integer value 10
and y will have the double precision floating point value 10.0. If the
object to be converted is an array, the typecast function will act
upon all elements of the array. For example,
x = [1:10]; % Array of integers
y = typecast (x, Double_Type);
will create an array of 10 double precision values and assign it to y.
One should also realize that it is not always possible to perform a
typecast. For example, any attempt to convert an Integer_Type to a
Null_Type will result in a run-time error. Typecasting works only when
datatypes are similar.
Often the interpreter will perform implicit type conversions as
necessary to complete calculations. For example, when multiplying an
Integer_Type with a Double_Type, it will convert the Integer_Type to a
Double_Type for the purpose of the calculation. Thus, the example
involving the conversion of an array of integers to an array of
doubles could have been performed by multiplication by 1.0, i.e.,
x = [1:10]; % Array of integers
y = 1.0 * x;
The string intrinsic function should be used whenever a string
representation is needed. Using the typecast function for this purpose
will usually fail unless the object to be converted is similar to a
string--- most are not. Moreover, when typecasting an array to
String_Type, the typecast function acts on each element of the array
to produce another array, whereas the string function will produce a
string.
One use of string function is to print the value of an object. This
use is illustrated in the following simple example:
define print_object (x)
{
message (string (x));
}
Here, the message function has been used because it writes a string to
the display. If the string function was not used and the message func-
tion was passed an integer, a type-mismatch error would have resulted.
5. Identifiers
The names given to variables, functions, and data types are called
identifiers. There are some restrictions upon the actual characters
that make up an identifier. An identifier name must start with an
alphabetic character ([A-Za-z]), an underscore character, or a dollar
sign. The rest of the characters in the name can be any combination of
letters, digits, dollar signs, or underscore characters. However, all
identifiers whose name begins with two underscore characters are
reserved for internal use by the interpreter and declarations of
objects with such names should be avoided.
Examples of valid identifiers include:
mary _3 _this_is_ok
a7e1 $44 _44$_Three
However, the following are not legal:
7abc 2e0 #xx
In fact, 2e0 actually specifies the double precision number 2.0.
There is no limit to the maximum length of an identifier. For
practical usage it is wise to limit the length of identifiers to a
reasonable value.
The following identifiers are reserved by the language for use as
keywords:
and andelse break case catch
continue define do else ERROR_BLOCK
exch EXIT_BLOCK finally _for for
foreach forever !if if ifnot
loop mod not or orelse
pop private public return shl
shr static struct switch __tmp
then throw try typedef USER_BLOCK0
USER_BLOCK1 USER_BLOCK2 USER_BLOCK3 USER_BLOCK4 using
variable while xor
6. Variables
As many of the preceding examples have shown, a variable must be
declared before it can be used, otherwise an undefined name error will
be generated. A variable is declared using the variable keyword, e.g,
variable x, y, z;
declares three variables, x, y, and z. This is an example of a vari-
able declaration statement, and like all statements, it must end in a
semicolon.
Variables declared this way are untyped and inherit a type upon
assignment. As such, type-checking of function arguments, etc is
performed at run-time. For example,
x = "This is a string";
x = 1.2;
x = 3;
x = 2i;
results in x being set successively to a string, a float, an integer,
and to a complex number (0+2i). Any attempt to use a variable before
it has acquired a type will result in an uninitialized variable error.
It is legal to put executable code in a variable declaration list.
That is,
variable x = 1, y = sin (x);
are legal variable declarations. This also provides a convenient way
of initializing a variable.
Variables are classified as either global or local. A variable
declared inside a function is said to be local and has no meaning
outside the function. A variable is said to be global if it was
declared outside a function. Global variables are further classified
as being public, static, or private, according to the namespace where
they were defined. See the chapter on ``Namespaces'' for more
information about namespaces.
The following global variables are predefined by the language and live
in the public namespace. They are mainly used as convenience
variables:
$0 $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 $6 $7 $8 $9
An intrinsic variable is another type of global variable. Such
variables have a definite type which cannot be altered. Variables of
this type may also be defined to be read-only, or constant variables.
An example of an intrinsic variable is PI which is a read-only double
precision variable with a value of approximately
3.14159265358979323846.
7. Operators
S-Lang supports a variety of operators that are grouped into three
classes: assignment operators, binary operators, and unary operators.
An assignment operator is used to assign a value to a variable. They
will be discussed more fully in the context of the assignment
statement in the section on ``Assignment Statements''.
An unary operator acts only upon a single quantity while a binary
operation is an operation between two quantities. The boolean operator
not is an example of an unary operator. Examples of binary operators
include the usual arithmetic operators +, -, *, and /. The operator
given by - can be either an unary operator (negation) or a binary
operator (subtraction); the actual operation is determined from the
context in which it is used.
Binary operators are used in algebraic forms, e.g., a + b. Unary
operators fall into one of two classes: postfix-unary or prefix-unary.
For example, in the expression -x, the minus sign is a prefix-unary
operator.
All binary and unary operators may be defined for any supported data
type. For example, the arithmetic plus operator has been extended to
the String_Type data type to permit concatenation between strings. But
just because it is possible to define the action of an operator upon a
data type, it does not mean that all data types support all the binary
and unary operators. For example, while String_Type supports the +
operator, it does not admit the * operator.
7.1. Unary Operators
The unary operators operate only upon a single operand. They include:
not, ~, -, @, &, as well as the increment and decrement operators ++
and --, respectively.
The boolean operator not acts only upon integers and produces 0 if its
operand is non-zero, otherwise it produces 1.
The bit-level not operator ~ performs a similar function, except that
it operates on the individual bits of its integer operand.
The arithmetic negation operator - is perhaps the most well-known
unary operator. It simply reverses the sign of its operand.
The reference (&) and dereference (@) operators will be discussed in
greater detail in the section on ``Referencing Variables''.
Similarly, the increment (++) and decrement (--) operators will be
discussed in the context of the assignment operator.
7.2. Binary Operators
The binary operators may be grouped according to several classes:
arithmetic operators, relational operators, boolean operators, and
bitwise operators.
7.2.1. Arithmetic Operators
The arithmetic operators include +, -, *, and /, which perform
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, respectively. In
addition to these, S-Lang supports the mod operator, which divides two
numbers and produces the remainder, as as well as the power operator
^.
The data type of the result produced by the use of one of these
operators depends upon the data types of the binary participants. If
they are both integers, the result will be an integer. However, if the
operands are not of the same type, they will be converted to a common
type before the operation is performed. For example, if one is a
floating point type and the other is an integer, the integer will be
converted to a float. In general, the promotion from one type to
another is such that no information is lost, if possible. As an
example, consider the expression 8/5 which indicates division of the
integer 8 by the integer 5. The result will be the integer 1 and not
the floating point value 1.6. However, 8/5.0 will produce 1.6 because
5.0 is a floating point number.
7.2.2. Relational Operators
The relational operators are >, >=, <, <=, ==, and !=. These perform
the comparisons greater than, greater than or equal, less than, less
than or equal, equal, and not equal, respectively. For most data
types, the result of the comparison will be a boolean value; however,
for arrays the result will be an array of boolean values. The section
on arrays will explain this is greater detail.
Note: For S-Lang versions 2.1 and higher, relational expressions such
as a<b<=c are defined in the mathematical sense, i.e.,
((a < b) and (b <= c))
Simarily, (a < b <= c < d) is the same as
((a < b) and (b <= c) and (c < d))
and so on. In previous versions of S-Lang, (a<b<c) meant (a<b)<c; how-
ever this interpretation was not very useful.
7.2.3. Boolean Operators
S-Lang supports four boolean binary operators: or, and, ||, and &&,
which for most data types, return a boolean result. In particular, the
or and || operators return a non-zero value (boolean TRUE) if either
of their operands are non-zero, otherwise they produce zero (boolean
FALSE). The and and && operators produce a non-zero value if and only
if both their operands are non-zero, otherwise they produce zero.
Unlike the operators && and ||, the and and or operators do not
perform the so-called boolean short-circuit evaluation. For example,
consider the expression:
(x != 0) and (1/x > 10)
Here, if x were to have a value of zero, a division by zero error
would occur because even though x!=0 evaluates to zero, the and opera-
tor is not short-circuited and the 1/x expression would still be eval-
uated. This problem can be avoided using the short-circuiting && oper-
ator:
(x != 0) && (1/x > 10)
Another difference between the short-circuiting (&&,||) and the non-
short-circuiting operators (and,or) is that the short-circuiting forms
work only with integer or boolean types. In contrast, if either of the
operands of the and or or operators is an array then a corresponding
array of boolean values will result. This is explained in more detail
in the section on arrays.
Note: the short-circuiting operators && and || were first introduced
in S-Lang 2.1; they are not available in older versions.
7.2.4. Bitwise Operators
The bitwise binary operators are currently defined for integer
operands and are used for bit-level operations. Operators that fall in
this class include &, |, shl, shr, and xor. The & operator performs a
boolean AND operation between the corresponding bits of the operands.
Similarly, the | operator performs the boolean OR operation on the
bits. The bit-shifting operators shl and shr shift the bits of the
first operand by the number given by the second operand to the left or
right, respectively. Finally, the xor performs an EXCLUSIVE-OR
operation.
These operators are commonly used to manipulate variables whose
individual bits have distinct meanings. In particular, & is usually
used to test bits, | can be used to set bits, and xor may be used to
flip a bit.
As an example of using & to perform tests on bits, consider the
following: The jed text editor stores some of the information about a
buffer in a bitmapped integer variable. The value of this variable may
be retrieved using the jed intrinsic function getbuf_info, which
actually returns four quantities: the buffer flags, the name of the
buffer, directory name, and file name. For the purposes of this
section, only the buffer flags are of interest and can be retrieved
via a function such as
define get_buffer_flags ()
{
variable flags;
(,,,flags) = getbuf_info ();
return flags;
}
The buffer flags object is a bitmapped quantity where the 0th bit
indicates whether or not the buffer has been modified, the first bit
indicates whether or not autosave has been enabled for the buffer, and
so on. Consider for the moment the task of determining if the buffer
has been modified. This can be determined by looking at the zeroth
bit: if it is 0 the buffer has not been modified, otherwise it has
been modified. Thus we can create the function,
define is_buffer_modified ()
{
variable flags = get_buffer_flags ();
return (flags & 1);
}
where the integer 1 has been used since it is represented as an object
with all bits unset, except for the zeroth one, which is set. (At this
point, it should also be apparent that bits are numbered from zero,
thus an 8 bit integer consists of bits 0 to 7, where 0 is the least
significant bit and 7 is the most significant one.) Similarly, we can
create another function
define is_autosave_on ()
{
variable flags = get_buffer_flags ();
return (flags & 2);
}
to determine whether or not autosave has been turned on for the
buffer.
The shl operator may be used to form the integer with only the nth bit
set. For example, 1 shl 6 produces an integer with all bits set to
zero except the sixth bit, which is set to one. The following example
exploits this fact:
define test_nth_bit (flags, nth)
{
return flags & (1 shl nth);
}
7.2.5. The Namespace Operator
The operator -> is used to in conjunction with a namespace to access
an object within the namespace. For example, if A is the name of a
namespace containing the variable v, then A->v refers to that
variable. Namespaces are discussed more fully in the chapter on
``Namespaces''.
7.2.6. Operator Precedence
7.2.7. Binary Operators and Functions Returning Multiple Values
Care must be exercised when using binary operators with an operand
that returns multiple values. In fact, the current implementation of
the S-Lang language will produce incorrect results if both operands of
a binary expression return multiple values. At most, only one of
operands of a binary expression can return multiple values, and that
operand must be the first one, not the second. For example,
define read_line (fp)
{
variable line, status;
status = fgets (&line, fp);
if (status == -1)
return -1;
return (line, status);
}
defines a function, read_line that takes a single argument specifying
a handle to an open file, and returns one or two values, depending
upon the return value of fgets. Now consider
while (read_line (fp) > 0)
{
text = ();
% Do something with text
.
.
}
Here the relational binary operator > forms a comparison between one
of the return values (the one at the top of the stack) and 0. In
accordance with the above rule, since read_line returns multiple val-
ues, it must occur as the left binary operand. Putting it on the
right as in
while (0 < read_line (fp)) % Incorrect
{
text = ();
% Do something with text
.
.
}
violates the rule and will result in the wrong answer. For this rea-
son, one should avoid using a function that returns muliple return
values as a binary operand.
7.3. Mixing Integer and Floating Point Arithmetic
If a binary operation (+, -, * , /) is performed on two integers, the
result is an integer. If at least one of the operands is a floating
point value, the other will be converted to a floating point value,
and a floating point result be produced. For example:
11 / 2 --> 5 (integer)
11 / 2.0 --> 5.5 (double)
11.0 / 2 --> 5.5 (double)
11.0 / 2.0 --> 5.5 (double)
Sometimes to achive the desired result, it is necessary to explicitly
convert from one data type to another. For example, suppose that a and
b are integers, and that one wants to compute a/b using floating point
arithmetic. In such a case, it is necessary to convert at least one of
the operands to a floating point value using, e.g., the double
function:
x = a/double(b);
7.4. Short Circuit Boolean Evaluation
As of S-Lang version 2.1, use of the andelse and orelse have been
deprecated in favor of the && and || short-circuiting operators.
The boolean operators or and and are not short circuited as they are
in some languages. S-Lang uses orelse and andelse expressions for
short circuit boolean evaluation. However, these are not binary
operators. Expressions of the form:
expr-1 and expr-2 and ... expr-n
can be replaced by the short circuited version using andelse:
andelse {expr-1} {expr-2} ... {expr-n}
A similar syntax holds for the orelse operator. For example, consider
the statement:
if ((x != 0) and (1/x > 10)) do_something ();
Here, if x were to have a value of zero, a division by zero error
would occur because even though x!=0 evaluates to zero, the and opera-
tor is not short circuited and the 1/x expression would be evaluated
causing division by zero. For this case, the andelse expression could
be used to avoid the problem:
if (andelse
{x != 0}
{1 / x > 10}) do_something ();
8. Statements
Loosely speaking, a statement is composed of expressions that are
grouped according to the syntax or grammar of the language to express
a complete computation. A semicolon is used to denote the end of a
statement.
A statement that occurs within a function is executed only during
execution of the function. However, statements that occur outside the
context of a function are evaluated immediately.
The language supports several different types of statements such as
assignment statements, conditional statements, and so forth. These are
described in detail in the following sections.
8.1. Variable Declaration Statements
Variable declarations were already discussed in the chapter on
``Variables''. For the sake of completeness, a variable declaration is
a statement of the form
variable variable-declaration-list ;
where the variable-declaration-list is a comma separated list of one
or more variable names with optional initializations, e.g.,
variable x, y = 2, z;
8.2. Assignment Statements
Perhaps the most well known form of statement is the assignment
statement. Statements of this type consist of a left-hand side, an
assignment operator, and a right-hand side. The left-hand side must be
something to which an assignment can be performed. Such an object is
called an lvalue.
The most common assignment operator is the simple assignment operator
=. Examples of its use include
x = 3;
x = some_function (10);
x = 34 + 27/y + some_function (z);
x = x + 3;
In addition to the simple assignment operator, S-Lang also supports
the binary assignment operators:
+= -= *= /= &= |=
Internally, S-Lang transforms
a += b;
to
a = a + b;
Likewise a-=b is transformed to a=a-b, a*=b is transformed to a=a*b,
and so on.
It is extremely important to realize that, in general, a+b is not
equal to b+a. For example if a and b are strings, then a+b will be the
string resulting from the concatenation of a and b, which generally is
not he same as the concatenation of b with a. This means that a+=b may
not be the same as a=b+a, as the following example illustrates:
a = "hello"; b = "world";
a += b; % a will become "helloworld"
c = b + a; % c will become "worldhelloworld"
Since adding or subtracting 1 from a variable is quite common, S-Lang
also supports the unary increment and decrement operators ++, and --,
respectively. That is, for numeric data types,
x = x + 1;
x += 1;
x++;
are all equivalent. Similarly,
x = x - 1;
x -= 1;
x--;
are also equivalent.
Strictly speaking, ++ and -- are unary operators. When used as x++,
the ++ operator is said to be a postfix-unary operator. However, when
used as ++x it is said to be a prefix-unary operator. The current
implementation does not distinguish between the two forms, thus x++
and ++x are equivalent. The reason for this equivalence is that
assignment expressions do not return a value in the S-Lang language as
they do in C. Thus one should exercise care and not try to write C-
like code such as
x = 10;
while (--x) do_something (x); % Ok in C, but not in S-Lang
The closest valid S-Lang form involves a comma-expression:
x = 10;
while (x--, x) do_something (x); % Ok in S-Lang and in C
S-Lang also supports a multiple-assignment statement. It is discussed
in detail in the section on ``Multiple Assignment Statement''.
8.3. Conditional and Looping Statements
S-Lang supports a wide variety of conditional and looping statements.
These constructs operate on statements grouped together in blocks. A
block is a sequence of S-Lang statements enclosed in braces and may
contain other blocks. However, a block cannot include function
declarations. In the following, statement-or-block refers to either a
single S-Lang statement or to a block of statements, and integer-
expression is an integer-valued or boolean expression. next-statement
represents the statement following the form under discussion.
8.3.1. Conditional Forms
8.3.1.1. if
The simplest condition statement is the if statement. It follows the
syntax
if (integer-expression) statement-or-block next-statement
If integer-expression evaluates to a non-zero (boolean TRUE) result,
then the statement or group of statements implied statement-or-block
will get executed. Otherwise, control will proceed to next-statement.
An example of the use of this type of conditional statement is
if (x != 0)
{
y = 1.0 / x;
if (x > 0) z = log (x);
}
This example illustrates two if statements where the second if state-
ment is part of the block of statements that belong to the first.
8.3.1.2. if-else
Another form of if statement is the if-else statement. It follows the
syntax:
if (integer-expression) statement-or-block-1 else statement-or-block-2
next-statement
Here, if expression evaluates to a non-zero integer, statement-or-
block-1 will get executed and control will pass on to next-statement.
However, if expression evaluates to zero, statement-or-block-2 will
get executed before continuing on to next-statement. A simple example
of this form is
if (x > 0)
z = log (x);
else
throw DomainError, "x must be positive";
Consider the more complex example:
if (city == "Boston")
if (street == "Beacon") found = 1;
else if (city == "Madrid")
if (street == "Calle Mayor") found = 1;
else found = 0;
This example illustrates a problem that beginners have with if-else
statements. Syntactically, this example is equivalent to
if (city == "Boston")
{
if (street == "Beacon") found = 1;
else if (city == "Madrid")
{
if (street == "Calle Mayor") found = 1;
else found = 0;
}
}
although the indentation indicates otherwise. It is important to
understand the grammar and not be seduced by the indentation!
8.3.1.3. ifnot
One often encounters if statements similar to
if (integer-expression == 0) statement-or-block
or equivalently,
if (not(integer-expression)) statement-or-block
The ifnot statement was added to the language to simplify the handling
of such statements. It obeys the syntax
ifnot (integer-expression) statement-or-block
and is functionally equivalent to
if (not (expression)) statement-or-block
Note: The ifnot keyword was added in version 2.1 and is not supported
by earlier versions. For compatibility with older code, the !if
keyword can be used, although its use is deprecated in favor of ifnot.
8.3.1.4. orelse, andelse
As of S-Lang version 2.1, use of the andelse and orelse have been
deprecated in favor of the && and || short-circuiting operators.
The syntax for the orelse statement is:
orelse {integer-expression-1} ... {integer-expression-n}
This causes each of the blocks to be executed in turn until one of
them returns a non-zero integer value. The result of this statement is
the integer value returned by the last block executed. For example,
orelse { 0 } { 6 } { 2 } { 3 }
returns 6 since the second block is the first to return a non-zero
result. The last two block will not get executed.
The syntax for the andelse statement is:
andelse {integer-expression-1} ... {integer-expression-n}
Each of the blocks will be executed in turn until one of them returns
a zero value. The result of this statement is the integer value
returned by the last block executed. For example,
andelse { 6 } { 2 } { 0 } { 4 }
evaluates to 0 since the third block will be the last to execute.
8.3.1.5. switch
The switch statement deviates from its C counterpart. The syntax is:
switch (x)
{ ... : ...}
.
.
{ ... : ...}
The `:' operator is a special symbol that in the context of the switch
statement, causes the top item on the stack to be tested, and if it is
non-zero, the rest of the block will get executed and control will
pass out of the switch statement. Otherwise, the execution of the
block will be terminated and the process will be repeated for the next
block. If a block contains no : operator, the entire block is executed
and control will pass onto the next statement following the switch
statement. Such a block is known as the default case.
As a simple example, consider the following:
switch (x)
{ x == 1 : message("Number is one.");}
{ x == 2 : message("Number is two.");}
{ x == 3 : message("Number is three.");}
{ x == 4 : message("Number is four.");}
{ x == 5 : message("Number is five.");}
{ message ("Number is greater than five.");}
Suppose x has an integer value of 3. The first two blocks will termi-
nate at the `:' character because each of the comparisons with x will
produce zero. However, the third block will execute to completion.
Similarly, if x is 7, only the last block will execute in full.
A more familiar way to write the previous example is to make use of
the case keyword:
switch (x)
{ case 1 : message("Number is one.");}
{ case 2 : message("Number is two.");}
{ case 3 : message("Number is three.");}
{ case 4 : message("Number is four.");}
{ case 5 : message("Number is five.");}
{ message ("Number is greater than five.");}
The case keyword is a more useful comparison operator because it can
perform a comparison between different data types while using == may
result in a type-mismatch error. For example,
switch (x)
{ (x == 1) or (x == "one") : message("Number is one.");}
{ (x == 2) or (x == "two") : message("Number is two.");}
{ (x == 3) or (x == "three") : message("Number is three.");}
{ (x == 4) or (x == "four") : message("Number is four.");}
{ (x == 5) or (x == "five") : message("Number is five.");}
{ message ("Number is greater than five.");}
will fail because the == operation is not defined between strings and
integers. The correct way to write this is to use the case keyword:
switch (x)
{ case 1 or case "one" : message("Number is one.");}
{ case 2 or case "two" : message("Number is two.");}
{ case 3 or case "three" : message("Number is three.");}
{ case 4 or case "four" : message("Number is four.");}
{ case 5 or case "five" : message("Number is five.");}
{ message ("Number is greater than five.");}
8.3.2. Looping Forms
In this section, the various looping statements are discussed. Each of
these statements support an optional then clause, which is discussed
in a separate section below.
8.3.2.1. while
The while statement follows the syntax
while (integer-expression) statement-or-block [ then statement-or-
block ] next-statement
It simply causes statement-or-block to get executed as long as inte-
ger-expression evaluates to a non-zero result. For example,
i = 10;
while (i)
{
i--;
newline ();
}
will cause the newline function to get called 10 times. However,
i = -10;
while (i)
{
i--;
newline ();
}
would loop forever (or until i wraps from the most negative integer
value to the most positive and then decrements to zero).
If you are a C programmer, do not let the syntax of the language
seduce you into writing this example as you would in C:
i = 10;
while (i--) newline ();
Keep in mind that expressions such as i-- do not return a value in S-
Lang as they do in C. The same effect can be achieved to use a comma
to separate the expressions as as in
i = 10;
while (i, i--) newline ();
8.3.2.2. do...while
The do...while statement follows the syntax
do statement-or-block while (integer-expression); [ then statement-or-
block ]
The main difference between this statement and the while statement is
that the do...while form performs the test involving integer-expres-
sion after each execution of statement-or-block rather than before.
This guarantees that statement-or-block will get executed at least
once.
A simple example from the jed editor follows:
bob (); % Move to beginning of buffer
do
{
indent_line ();
}
while (down (1));
This will cause all lines in the buffer to get indented via the jed
intrinsic function indent_line.
8.3.2.3. for
Perhaps the most complex looping statement is the for statement;
nevertheless, it is a favorite of many C programmers. This statement
obeys the syntax
for (init-expression; integer-expression; end-expression) statement-
or-block [ then statement-or-block ] next-statement
In addition to statement-or-block, its specification requires three
other expressions. When executed, the for statement evaluates init-
expression, then it tests integer-expression. If integer-expression
evaluates to zero, control passes to next-statement. Otherwise, it
executes statement-or-block as long as integer-expression evaluates to
a non-zero result. After every execution of statement-or-block, end-
expression will get evaluated.
This statement is almost equivalent to
init-expression; while (integer-expression) { statement-or-block end-
expression; }
The reason that they are not fully equivalent involves what happens
when statement-or-block contains a continue statement.
Despite the apparent complexity of the for statement, it is very easy
to use. As an example, consider
s = 0;
for (i = 1; i <= 10; i++) s += i;
which computes the sum of the first 10 integers.
8.3.2.4. loop
The loop statement simply executes a block of code a fixed number of
times. It follows the syntax
loop (integer-expression) statement-or-block [ then statement-or-block
] next-statement
If the integer-expression evaluates to a positive integer, statement-
or-block will get executed that many times. Otherwise, control will
pass to next-statement.
For example,
loop (10) newline ();
will execute the newline function 10 times.
8.3.2.5. _for
Like loop, the _for statement simply executes a block of code a fixed
number times. Unlike the loop statement, the _for loop is useful in
situations where the loop index is needed. It obeys the syntax
_for loop-variable (first-value, last-value, increment) block [ then
statement-or-block ] next-statement
Each time through the loop, the loop-variable will take on the succes-
sive values dictated by the other parameters. The first time through,
the loop-variable will have the value of first-value. The second time
its value will be first-value + increment, and so on. The loop will
terminate when the value of the loop index exceeds last-value. The
current implementation requires the control parameters first-value,
last-value, and increment to be integer-valued expressions.
For example, the _for statement may be used to compute the sum of the
first ten integers:
s = 0;
_for i (1, 10, 1)
s += i;
The execution speed of the _for loop is more than twice as fast as the
more powerful for loop making it a better choice for many situations.
8.3.2.6. forever
The forever statement is similar to the loop statement except that it
loops forever, or until a break or a return statement is executed. It
obeys the syntax
forever statement-or-block [ then statement-or-block ]
A trivial example of this statement is
n = 10;
forever
{
if (n == 0) break;
newline ();
n--;
}
8.3.2.7. foreach
The foreach statement is used to loop over one or more statements for
every element of an object. Most often the object will be a container
object such as an array, structure, or associative arrays, but it need
not be.
The simple type of foreach statement obeys the syntax
foreach var (object) statement-or-block [ then statement-or-block ]
Here object can be an expression that evaluates to a value. Each time
through the loop the variable var will take on a value that depends
upon the data type of the object being processed. For container
objects, var will take on values of successive members of the object.
A simple example is
foreach fruit (["apple", "peach", "pear"])
process_fruit (fruit);
This example shows that if the container object is an array, then suc-
cessive elements of the array are assigned to fruit prior to each exe-
cution cycle. If the container object is a string, then successive
characters of the string are assigned to the variable.
What actually gets assigned to the variable may be controlled via the
using form of the foreach statement. This more complex type of foreach
statement follows the syntax
foreach var ( container-object ) using ( control-list ) statement-or-
block
The allowed values of control-list will depend upon the type of con-
tainer object. For associative arrays (Assoc_Type), control-list spec-
ifies whether keys, values, or both are used. For example,
foreach k (a) using ("keys")
{
.
.
}
results in the keys of the associative array a being successively
assigned to k. Similarly,
foreach v (a) using ("values")
{
.
.
}
will cause the values to be used. The form
foreach k,v (a) using ("keys", "values")
{
.
.
}
may be used when both keys and values are desired.
Similarly, for linked-lists of structures, one may walk the list via
code like
foreach s (linked_list) using ("next")
{
.
.
}
This foreach statement is equivalent
s = linked_list;
while (s != NULL)
{
.
.
s = s.next;
}
Consult the type-specific documentation for a discussion of the using
control words, if any, appropriate for a given type.
8.3.3. break, return, and continue
S-Lang also includes the non-local transfer statements return, break,
and continue. The return statement causes control to return to the
calling function while the break and continue statements are used in
the context of loop structures. Consider:
define fun ()
{
forever
{
s1;
s2;
..
if (condition_1) break;
if (condition_2) return;
if (condition_3) continue;
..
s3;
}
s4;
..
}
Here, a function fun has been defined that contains a forever loop
consisting of statements s1, s2,...,s3, and three if statements. As
long as the expressions condition_1, condition_2, and condition_3
evaluate to zero, the statements s1, s2,...,s3 will be repeatedly exe-
cuted. However, if condition_1 returns a non-zero value, the break
statement will get executed, and control will pass out of the forever
loop to the statement immediately following the loop, which in this
case is s4. Similarly, if condition_2 returns a non-zero number, the
return statement will cause control to pass back to the caller of fun.
Finally, the continue statement will cause control to pass back to the
start of the loop, skipping the statement s3 altogether.
8.3.4. The looping then clause
As mentioned above, all the looping statements support an optional
then clause. The statements that comprise this clause get executed
only when the loop has run to completion and was not prematurely
terminated via a break statement. As an example, consider the
following:
count = 0;
max_tries = 20;
while (count < max_tries)
{
if (try_something ())
break;
count++;
% Failed -- try again
}
if (count == 20)
throw RunTimeError, "try_something failed 20 times";
Here, the code makes 20 attempts to perform some task (via the
try_something function) and if not successful it will throw an excep-
tion. Compare the above to an equivalent form that makes use of a
then-clause for the loop statement:
max_tries = 20;
loop (max_tries)
{
if (try_something ())
break;
% Failed -- try again
}
then throw RunTimeError, "try_something failed 20 times";
Here, the then statement would get executed only if the loop statement
has run to completion, i.e., loops 20 times in this case. This only
happens if the try_something function fails each time through the
loop. However, if the try_something function succeeds, then the break
statement will get executed causing the loop to abort prematurely,
which would result in the then clause not getting executed.
The use of such a construct can also simplify code such as:
if (some_condition)
{
foo_statements;
if (another_condition)
bar_statements;
else
fizzle_statements;
}
else fizzle_statements;
In this case the fizzle_statements are duplicated making the code ugly
and less maintainable. Ideally one would wrap the fizzle_statements in
a separate function and call it twice. However, this is not always
possible or convenient. The duplication can be eliminated by using the
then form of the loop statement:
loop (some_condition != 0)
{
foo_statements;
if (another_condition)
{
bar_statements;
break;
}
}
then fizzle_statements;
Here, the expression some_condition != 0 is going to result in either
0 or 1, causing the code to execute 0 or 1 loops. Since the fiz-
zle_statements are contained in the then clause, they will get exe-
cuted only when the requested number of loops executes to completion.
Executing 0 loops is regarded as successful completion of the loop
statement. Hence, when some_condition is 0, the fizzle_statements will
get executed. The fizzle_statements will not get executed only when
the loop is prematurely terminated, and that will occur when both
some_condition and another_condition are non-zero.
9. Functions
There are essentially two classes of functions that may be called from
the interpreter: intrinsic functions and slang functions.
An intrinsic function is one that is implemented in C or some other
compiled language and is callable from the interpreter. Nearly all of
the built-in functions are of this variety. At the moment the basic
interpreter provides nearly 300 intrinsic functions. Examples include
the trigonometric functions sin and cos, string functions such as
strcat, etc. Dynamically loaded modules such as the png and pcre
modules add additional intrinsic functions.
The other type of function is written in S-Lang and is known simply as
a ``S-Lang function''. Such a function may be thought of as a group of
statements that work together to perform a computation. The
specification of such functions is the main subject of this chapter.
9.1. Declaring Functions
Like variables, functions must be declared before they can be used.
The define keyword is used for this purpose. For example,
define factorial ();
is sufficient to declare a function named factorial. Unlike the vari-
able keyword used for declaring variables, the define keyword does not
accept a list of names.
Usually, the above form is used only for recursive functions. In most
cases, the function name is almost always followed by a parameter list
and the body of the function:
define function-name (parameter-list) { statement-list }
The function-name is an identifier and must conform to the naming
scheme for identifiers discussed in the chapter on ``Identifiers''.
The parameter-list is a comma-separated list of variable names that
represent parameters passed to the function, and may be empty if no
parameters are to be passed. The variables in the parameter-list are
implicitly declared, thus, there is no need to declare them via a
variable declaration statement. In fact any attempt to do so will
result in a syntax error.
The body of the function is enclosed in braces and consists of zero or
more statements (statement-list). While there are no imposed limits
upon the number statements that may occur within a S-Lang function, it
is considered poor programming practice if a function contains many
statements. This notion stems from the belief that a function should
have a simple, well-defined purpose.
9.2. Parameter Passing Mechanism
Parameters to a function are always passed by value and never by
reference. To see what this means, consider
define add_10 (a)
{
a = a + 10;
}
variable b = 0;
add_10 (b);
Here a function add_10 has been defined, which when executed, adds 10
to its parameter. A variable b has also been declared and initialized
to zero before being passed to add_10. What will be the value of b
after the call to add_10? If S-Lang were a language that passed param-
eters by reference, the value of b would be changed to 10. However,
S-Lang always passes by value, which means that b will retain its
value during and after after the function call.
S-Lang does provide a mechanism for simulating pass by reference via
the reference operator. This is described in greater detail in the
next section.
If a function is called with a parameter in the parameter list
omitted, the corresponding variable in the function will be set to
NULL. To make this clear, consider the function
define add_two_numbers (a, b)
{
if (a == NULL) a = 0;
if (b == NULL) b = 0;
return a + b;
}
This function must be called with two parameters. However, either of
them may omitted by calling the function in one of the following ways:
variable s = add_two_numbers (2,3);
variable s = add_two_numbers (2,);
variable s = add_two_numbers (,3);
variable s = add_two_numbers (,);
The first example calls the function using both parameters, but at
least one of the parameters was omitted in the other examples. If the
parser recognizes that a parameter has been omitted by finding a comma
or right-parenthesis where a value is expected, it will substitute
NULL for missing value. This means that the parser will convert the
latter three statements in the above example to:
variable s = add_two_numbers (2, NULL);
variable s = add_two_numbers (NULL, 3);
variable s = add_two_numbers (NULL, NULL);
It is important to note that this mechanism is available only for
function calls that specify more than one parameter. That is,
variable s = add_10 ();
is not equivalent to add_10(NULL). The reason for this is simple: the
parser can only tell whether or not NULL should be substituted by
looking at the position of the comma character in the parameter list,
and only function calls that indicate more than one parameter will use
a comma. A mechanism for handling single parameter function calls is
described later in this chapter.
9.3. Returning Values
The usual way to return values from a function is via the return
statement. This statement has the simple syntax
return expression-list ;
where expression-list is a comma separated list of expressions. If a
function does not return any values, the expression list will be
empty. A simple example of a function that can return multiple values
(two in this case) is:
define sum_and_diff (x, y)
{
variable sum, diff;
sum = x + y; diff = x - y;
return sum, diff;
}
9.4. Multiple Assignment Statement
In the previous section an example of a function returning two values
was given. That function can also be written somewhat simpler as:
define sum_and_diff (x, y)
{
return x + y, x - y;
}
This function may be called using
(s, d) = sum_and_diff (12, 5);
After the above line is executed, s will have a value of 17 and the
value of d will be 7.
The most general form of the multiple assignment statement is
( var_1, var_2, ..., var_n ) = expression;
Here expression is an arbitrary expression that leaves n items on the
stack, and var_k represents an l-value object (permits assignment).
The assignment statement removes those values and assigns them to the
specified variables. Usually, expression is a call to a function that
returns multiple values, but it need not be. For example,
(s,d) = (x+y, x-y);
produces results that are equivalent to the call to the sum_and_diff
function. Another common use of the multiple assignment statement is
to swap values:
(x,y) = (y,x);
(a[i], a[j], a[k]) = (a[j], a[k], a[i]);
If an l-value is omitted from the list, then the corresponding value
will be removed fro the stack. For example,
(s, ) = sum_and_diff (9, 4);
assigns the sum of 9 and 4 to s and the difference (9-4) is removed
from the stack. Similarly,
() = fputs ("good luck", fp);
causes the return value of the fputs function to be discarded.
It is possible to create functions that return a variable number of
values instead of a fixed number. Although such functions are
discouraged, it is easy to cope with them. Usually, the value at the
top of the stack will indicate the actual number of return values. For
such functions, the multiple assignment statement cannot directly be
used. To see how such functions can be dealt with, consider the
following function:
define read_line (fp)
{
variable line;
if (-1 == fgets (&line, fp))
return -1;
return (line, 0);
}
This function returns either one or two values, depending upon the
return value of fgets. Such a function may be handled using:
status = read_line (fp);
if (status != -1)
{
s = ();
.
.
}
In this example, the last value returned by read_line is assigned to
status and then tested. If it is non-zero, the second return value is
assigned to s. In particular note the empty set of parenthesis in the
assignment to s. This simply indicates that whatever is on the top of
the stack when the statement is executed will be assigned to s.
9.5. Referencing Variables
One can achieve the effect of passing by reference by using the
reference (&) and dereference (@) operators. Consider again the add_10
function presented in the previous section. This time it is written
as:
define add_10 (a)
{
@a = @a + 10;
}
variable b = 0;
add_10 (&b);
The expression &b creates a reference to the variable b and it is the
reference that gets passed to add_10. When the function add_10 is
called, the value of the local variable a will be a reference to the
variable b. It is only by dereferencing this value that b can be
accessed and changed. So, the statement @a=@a+10 should be read as
``add 10 to the value of the object that a references and assign the
result to the object that a references''.
The reader familiar with C will note the similarity between references
in S-Lang and pointers in C.
References are not limited to variables. A reference to a function may
also be created and passed to other functions. As a simple example
from elementary calculus, consider the following function which
returns an approximation to the derivative of another function at a
specified point:
define derivative (f, x)
{
variable h = 1e-6;
return ((@f)(x+h) - (@f)(x)) / h;
}
define x_squared (x)
{
return x^2;
}
dydx = derivative (&x_squared, 3);
When the derivative function is called, the local variable f will be a
reference to the x_squared function. The x_squared function is called
is called with the specified parameters by dereferencing f with the
dereference operator.
9.6. Functions with a Variable Number of Arguments
S-Lang functions may be called with a variable number of arguments. A
natural example of such functions is the strcat function, which takes
one or more string arguments and returns the concatenated result. An
example of different sort is the strtrim function which moves both
leading and trailing whitespace from a string. In this case, when
called with one argument (the string to be ``trimmed''), the
characters that are considered to be whitespace are those in the
character-set that have the whitespace property (space, tab, newline,
...). However, when called with two arguments, the second argument may
be used to specify the characters that are to be considered as
whitespace. The strtrim function exemplifies a class of variadic
functions where the additional arguments are used to pass optional
information to the function. Another more flexible and powerful way of
passing optional information is through the use of qualifiers, which
is the subject of the next section.
When a S-Lang function is called with parameters, those parameters are
placed on the run-time stack. The function accesses those parameters
by removing them from the stack and assigning them to the variables in
its parameter list. This details of this operation are for the most
part hidden from the programmer. But what happens when the number of
parameters in the parameter list is not equal to the number of
parameters passed to the function? If the number passed to the
function is less than what the function expects, a StackUnderflow
error could result as the function tries to remove items from the
stack. If the number passed is greater than the number in the
parameter list, then the extras will remain on the stack. The latter
feature makes it possible to write functions that take a variable
number of arguments.
Consider the add_10 example presented earlier. This time it is written
define add_10 ()
{
variable x;
x = ();
return x + 10;
}
variable s = add_10 (12); % ==> s = 22;
For the uninitiated, this example looks as if it is destined for dis-
aster. The add_10 function appears to accept zero arguments, yet it
was called with a single argument. On top of that, the assignment to x
might look a bit strange. The truth is, the code presented in this
example makes perfect sense, once you realize what is happening.
First, consider what happens when add_10 is called with the parameter
12. Internally, 12 is pushed onto the stack and then the function
called. Now, consider the function add_10 itself. In it, x is a local
variable. The strange looking assignment `x=()' causes whatever is on
the top of the stack to be assigned to x. In other words, after this
statement, the value of x will be 12, since 12 is at the top of the
stack.
A generic function of the form
define function_name (x, y, ..., z)
{
.
.
}
is transformed internally by the parser to something akin to
define function_name ()
{
variable x, y, ..., z;
z = ();
.
.
y = ();
x = ();
.
.
}
before further parsing. (The add_10 function, as defined above, is
already in this form.) With this knowledge in hand, one can write a
function that accepts a variable number of arguments. Consider the
function:
define average_n (n)
{
variable x, y;
variable s;
if (n == 1)
{
x = ();
s = x;
}
else if (n == 2)
{
y = ();
x = ();
s = x + y;
}
else throw NotImplementedError;
return s / n;
}
variable ave1 = average_n (3.0, 1); % ==> 3.0
variable ave2 = average_n (3.0, 5.0, 2); % ==> 4.0
Here, the last argument passed to average_n is an integer reflecting
the number of quantities to be averaged. Although this example works
fine, its principal limitation is obvious: it only supports one or two
values. Extending it to three or more values by adding more else if
constructs is rather straightforward but hardly worth the effort.
There must be a better way, and there is:
define average_n (n)
{
variable s, x;
s = 0;
loop (n)
{
x = (); % get next value from stack
s += x;
}
return s / n;
}
The principal limitation of this approach is that one must still pass
an integer that specifies how many values are to be averaged. Fortu-
nately, a special variable exists that is local to every function and
contains the number of values that were passed to the function. That
variable has the name _NARGS and may be used as follows:
define average_n ()
{
variable x, s = 0;
if (_NARGS == 0)
usage ("ave = average_n (x, ...);");
loop (_NARGS)
{
x = ();
s += x;
}
return s / _NARGS;
}
Here, if no arguments are passed to the function, the usage function
will generate a UsageError exception along with a simple message indi-
cating how to use the function.
9.7. Qualifiers
One way to pass optional information to a function is to do so using
the variable arguments mechanism described in the previous section.
However, a much more powerful mechanism is through the use of
qualifiers, which were added in version 2.1.
To illustrate the use of qualifiers, consider a graphics application
that defines a function called plot that plots a set of (x,y) values
specified as 1-d arrays:
plot(x,y);
Suppose that when called in the above manner, the application will
plot the data as black points. But instead of black points, one might
want to plot the data using a red diamond as the plot symbol. It
would be silly to have a separate function such as plot_red_diamond
for this purpose. A much better way to achieve this functionality is
through the use of qualifiers:
plot(x,y ; color="red", symbol="diamond");
Here, a single semicolon is used to separate the argument-list proper
(x,y) from the list of qualifiers. In this case, the qualifiers are
``color'' and ``symbol''. The order of the qualifiers in unimportant;
the function could just as well have been called with the symbol qual-
ifier listed first.
Now consider the implementation of the plot function:
define plot (x, y)
{
variable color = qualifier ("color", "black");
variable symbol = qualifier ("symbol", "point");
variable symbol_size = qualifier ("size", 1.0);
.
.
}
Note that the qualifiers are not handled in the parameter list; rather
they are handled in the function body using the qualifier function,
which is used to obtain the value of the qualifier. The second argu-
ment to the qualifier function specifies the default value to be used
if the function was not called with the specified qualifier. Also note
that the variable associated with the qualifier need not have the same
name as the qualifier.
A qualifier need not have a value--- its mere presence may be used to
enable or disable a feature or trigger some action. For example,
plot (x, y; connect_points);
specifies a qualifier called connect_points that indicates that a line
should be drawn between the data points. The presence of such a quali-
fier can be detected using the qualifier_exists function:
define plot (x,y)
{
.
.
variable connect_points = qualifier_exists ("connect_points");
.
.
}
Sometimes it is useful for a function to pass the qualifiers that it
has received to other functions. Suppose that the plot function calls
draw_symbol to plot the specified symbol at a particular location and
that it requires the symbol attibutes to be specified using
qualifiers. Then the plot function might look like:
define plot (x, y)
{
variable color = qualifier ("color", "black");
variable symbol = qualifier ("symbol", "point");
variable symbol_size = qualifier ("size", 1.0);
.
.
_for i (0, length(x)-1, 1)
draw_symbol (x[i],y[i]
;color=color, size=symbol_size, symbol=symbol);
.
.
}
The problem with this approach is that it does not scale well: the
plot function has to be aware of all the qualifiers that the draw_sym-
bol function takes and explicitly pass them. In many cases this can be
quite cumbersome and error prone. Rather it is better to simply pass
the qualifiers that were passed to the plot function on to the
draw_symbol function. This may be achieved using the __qualifiers
function. The __qualifiers function returns the list of qualifiers in
the form of a structure whose field names are the same as the quali-
fier names. In fact, the use of this function can simplify the imple-
mentation of the plot function, which may be coded more simply as
define plot (x, y)
{
variable i;
_for i (0, length(x)-1, 1)
draw_symbol (x[i],y[i] ;; __qualifiers());
}
Note the syntax is slightly different. The two semicolons indicate
that the qualifiers are specified not as name-value pairs, but as a
structure. Using a single semicolon would have created a qualifier
called __qualifiers, which is not what was desired.
As alluded to above an added benefit of this approach is that the plot
function does not need to know nor care about the qualifiers supported
by draw_symbol. When called as
plot (x, y; symbol="square", size=2.0, fill=0.8);
the fill qualifier would get passed to the draw_symbol function to
specify the ``fill'' value to be used when creating the symbol.
9.8. Exit-Blocks
An exit-block is a set of statements that get executed when a
functions returns. They are very useful for cleaning up when a
function returns via an explicit call to return from deep within a
function.
An exit-block is created by using the EXIT_BLOCK keyword according to
the syntax
EXIT_BLOCK { statement-list }
where statement-list represents the list of statements that comprise
the exit-block. The following example illustrates the use of an exit-
block:
define simple_demo ()
{
variable n = 0;
EXIT_BLOCK { message ("Exit block called."); }
forever
{
if (n == 10) return;
n++;
}
}
Here, the function contains an exit-block and a forever loop. The
loop will terminate via the return statement when n is 10. Before it
returns, the exit-block will get executed.
A function can contain multiple exit-blocks, but only the last one
encountered during execution will actually get used. For example,
define simple_demo (n)
{
EXIT_BLOCK { return 1; }
if (n != 1)
{
EXIT_BLOCK { return 2; }
}
return;
}
If 1 is passed to this function, the first exit-block will get exe-
cuted because the second one would not have been encountered during
the execution. However, if some other value is passed, the second
exit-block would get executed. This example also illustrates that it
is possible to explicitly return from an exit-block, but nested exit-
blocks are illegal.
9.9. Handling Return Values from a Function
The most important rule to remember in calling a function is that if
the function returns a value, the caller must do something with it.
While this might sound like a trivial statement it is the number one
issue that trips-up novice users of the language.
To elaborate on this point further, consider the fputs function, which
writes a string to a file descriptor. This function can fail when,
e.g., a disk is full, or the file is located on a network share and
the network goes down, etc.
S-Lang supports two mechanisms that a function may use to report a
failure: raising an exception, returning a status code. The latter
mechanism is used by the S-Lang fputs function. i.e., it returns a
value to indicate whether or not is was successful. Many users
familiar with this function either seem to forget this fact, or assume
that the function will succeed and not bother handling the return
value. While some languages silently remove such values from the
stack, S-Lang regards the stack as a dynamic data structure that
programs can utilize. As a result, the value will be left on the S-
Lang stack and can cause problems later on.
There are a number of correct ways of ``doing something'' with the
return value from a function. Of course the recommended procedure is
to use the return value as it was meant to be used. In the case of
fputs, the proper thing to do is to check the return value, e.g.,
if (-1 == fputs ("good luck", fp))
{
% Handle the error
}
Other acceptable ways to ``do something'' with the return value
include assigning it to a dummy variable,
dummy = fputs ("good luck", fp);
or simply ``popping'' it from the stack:
fputs ("good luck", fp); pop();
The latter mechanism can also be written as
() = fputs ("good luck", fp);
The last form is a special case of the multiple assignment statement,
which was discussed earlier. Since this form is simpler than assigning
the value to a dummy variable or explicitly calling the pop function,
it is recommended over the other two mechanisms. Finally, this form
has the redeeming feature that it presents a visual reminder that the
function is returning a value that is not being used.
10. Namespaces
By default, all global variables and functions are defined in the
global or public namespace. In addition to the global namespace, every
compilation unit (e.g., a file containing S-Lang code) has a private,
or anonymous namespace. The private namespace is used when one wants
to restrict the usage of one or more functions or variables to the
compilation unit that defines them without worrying about objects with
the same names defined elsewhere.
Objects are declared as belonging to the private namespace using the
private declaration keyword. Similarly if a variable is declared using
the public qualifier, it will be placed in the public namespace. For
example,
private variable i;
public variable j;
defines a variable called i in the private namespace and one called j
in the public namespace.
The implements function may be used to create a new namespace of a
specified name and have it associated with the compilation unit.
Objects may be placed into this namespace space using the static
keyword, e.g.,
static variable X;
static define foo () {...}
For this reason, such a namespace will be called the static namespace
associated with the compilation unit. Such objects may be accessed
from outside the local compilation unit using the namespace operator
-> in conjunction with the name of the namespace.
Since it is possible for three namespaces (private, static, public) to
be associated with a compilation unit, it is important to understand
how names are resolved by the parser. During the compilation stage,
symbols are looked up according to the current scope. If in a
function, the local variables of the function are searched first. Then
the search proceeds with symbols in the private namespace, followed by
those in the static namespace associated with the compilation unit (if
any), and finally with the public namespace. If after searching the
public namespace the symbol has not been resolved, an
UndefinedNameError exception will result.
In addition to using the implements function, there are other ways to
associate a namespace with a compilation unit. One is via the optional
namespace argument of the evalfile function. For example,
() = evalfile ("foo.sl", "bar");
will cause foo.sl to be loaded and associated with a namespace called
bar. Then any static symbols of foo.sl may accessed using the bar->
prefix.
It is important to note that if a static namespace has been associated
with the compilation unit, then any symbols in that unit declared
without an namespace qualifier will be placed in the static namespace.
Otherwise such symbols will be placed in the public namespace, and any
symbols declared as static will be placed in the private namespace.
To illustrate these concepts, consider the following example:
% foo.sl
variable X = 1;
static variable Y;
private variable Z;
public define set_Y (y) { Y = y; }
static define set_z (z) { Z = z; }
If foo.sl is loaded via
() = evalfile ("foo.sl");
then no static namespace will be associated with it. As a result, X
will be placed in the public namespace since it was declared with no
namespace qualifier. Also Y and set_z will be placed in the private
namespace since no static namespace has been associated with the file.
In this scenario there will be no way to get at the Z variable from
outside of foo.sl since both it and the function that accesses it
(set_z) are placed in the private namespace.
On the other hand, suppose that the file is loaded using a namespace
argument:
() = evalfile ("foo.sl", "foo");
In this case X, Y, and get_z will be placed in the foo namespace.
These objects may be accessed from outside foo.sl using the foo-> pre-
fix, e.g.,
foo->set_z (3.0);
if (foo->X == 2) foo->Y = 1;
Because a file may be loaded with or without a namespace attached to
it, it is a good idea to avoid using the static qualifier. To see
this, consider again the above example but this time without the use
of the static qualifier:
% foo.sl
variable X = 1;
variable Y;
private variable Z;
public define set_Y (y) { Y = y; }
define set_z (z) { Z = z; }
When loaded without a namespace argument, the variable Z will remain
in the private namespace, but the set_z function will be put in the
public namespace. Previously set_z was put in the private namespace
making both it and Z inaccessible.
11. Arrays
An array is a container object that can contain many values of one
data type. Arrays are very useful objects and are indispensable for
certain types of programming. The purpose of this chapter is to
describe how arrays are defined and used in the S-Lang language.
11.1. Creating Arrays
The S-Lang language supports multi-dimensional arrays of all data
types. Since the Array_Type is a data type, one can even have arrays
of arrays. To create a multi-dimensional array of SomeType and assign
to some variable, use:
a = SomeType [dim0, dim1, ..., dimN];
Here dim0, dim1, ... dimN specify the size of the individual dimen-
sions of the array. The current implementation permits arrays to con-
tain as many as 7 dimensions. When a numeric array is created, all its
elements are initialized to zero. The initialization of other array
types depend upon the data type, e.g., the elements in String_Type and
Struct_Type arrays are initialized to NULL.
As a concrete example, consider
a = Integer_Type [10];
which creates a one-dimensional array of 10 integers and assigns it to
a. Similarly,
b = Double_Type [10, 3];
creates a 30 element array of double precision numbers arranged in 10
rows and 3 columns, and assigns it to b.
11.1.1. Range Arrays
There is a more convenient syntax for creating and initializing 1-d
arrays. For example, to create an array of ten integers whose elements
run from 1 through 10, one may simply use:
a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10];
Similarly,
b = [1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0, 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0];
specifies an array of ten doubles.
An even more compact way of specifying a numeric array is to use a
range-array. For example,
a = [0:9];
specifies an array of 10 integers whose elements range from 0 through
9. The syntax for the most general form of range array is given by
[first-value : last-value : increment]
where the increment is optional and defaults to 1. This creates an
array whose first element is first-value and whose successive values
differ by increment. last-value sets an upper limit upon the last
value of the array as described below.
If the range array [a:b:c] is integer valued, then the interval
specified by a and b is closed. That is, the kth element of the array
x_k is given by x_k=a+kc and satisfies a<=x_k<=b. Hence, the number of
elements in an integer range array is given by the expression 1 + (b-
a)/c.
The situation is somewhat more complicated for floating point range
arrays. The interval specified by a floating point range array [a:b:c]
is semi-open such that b is not contained in the interval. In
particular, the kth element of [a:b:c] is given by x_k=a+kc such that
a<=x_k<b when c>=0, and b<x_k<=a otherwise. The number of elements in
the array is one greater than the largest k that satisfies the open
interval constraint.
In contrast, a range-array expressed in the form [a:b:#n] represents
an array of exactly n elements running from a to b inclusive. It is
equivalent to a+[0:n-1]*(b-a)/(n-1).
Here are a few examples that illustrate the above comments:
[1:5:1] ==> [1,2,3,4,5]
[1.0:5.0:1.0] ==> [1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0]
[5:1:-1] ==> [5,4,3,2,1]
[5.0:1.0:-1.0] ==> [5.0, 4.0, 3.0, 2.0];
[1:1] ==> [1]
[1.0:1.0] ==> []
[1.0:1.0001] ==> [1.0]
[1:-3] ==> []
[0:1:#5] ==> [0.0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 1.0]
[0:-1:#3] ==> [0.0, -0.5, -1.0]
Currently Int_Type is the only integer type supported by range
arrays--- arbitrary integer types will be supported in a future
version. This means that [1h:5h] will not produce an array of
Short_Type, rather it will produce an Int_Type array. However,
[1h,2h,3h,4h,5h] will produce an array of Short_Type integers.
11.1.2. Creating arrays via the dereference operator
Another way to create an array is to apply the dereference operator @
to the DataType_Type literal Array_Type. The actual syntax for this
operation resembles a function call
variable a = @Array_Type (data-type, integer-array);
where data-type is of type DataType_Type and integer-array is a 1-d
array of integers that specify the size of each dimension. For exam-
ple,
variable a = @Array_Type (Double_Type, [10, 20]);
will create a 10 by 20 array of doubles and assign it to a. This
method of creating arrays derives its power from the fact that it is
more flexible than the methods discussed in this section. It is par-
ticularly useful for creating arrays during run-time in situations
where the data-type can vary.
11.2. Reshaping Arrays
It is sometimes useful to change the `shape' of an array using the
reshape function. For example, a 1-d 10 element array may be reshaped
into a 2-d array consisting of 5 rows and 2 columns. The only
restriction on the operation is that the arrays must be commensurate.
The reshape function follows the syntax
reshape (array-name, integer-array);
where array-name specifies the array to be reshaped to the dimensions
given by integer-array, a 1-dimensional array of integers. It is
important to note that this does not create a new array, it simply
reshapes the existing array. Thus,
variable a = Double_Type [100];
reshape (a, [10, 10]);
turns a into a 10 by 10 array, as well as any other variables attached
to the array.
The _reshape function works like reshape except that it creates a new
array instead of changing the shape of an existing array:
new_a = _reshape (a, [10,10]);
11.3. Simple Array Indexing
An individual element of an array may be referred to by its index. For
example, a[0] specifies the zeroth element of the one dimensional
array a, and b[3,2] specifies the element in the third row and second
column of the two dimensional array b. As in C, array indices are
numbered from 0. Thus if a is a one-dimensional array of ten integers,
the last element of the array is given by a[9]. Using a[10] would
result in an IndexError exception.
A negative index may be used to index from the end of the array, with
a[-1] referring to the last element of a. Similarly, a[-2] refers to
the next to the last element, and so on.
One may use the indexed value like any other variable. For example, to
set the third element of an integer array to 6, use
a[2] = 6;
Similarly, that element may be used in an expression, such as
y = a[2] + 7;
Unlike other S-Lang variables which inherit a type upon assignment,
array elements already have a type and any attempt to assign a value
with an incompatible type will result in a TypeMismatchError excep-
tion. For example, it is illegal to assign a string value to an inte-
ger array.
One may use any integer expression to index an array. A simple example
that computes the sum of the elements of a 10 element 1-d array is
variable i, s;
s = 0;
for (i = 0; i < 10; i++) s += a[i];
(In practice, do not carry out sums this way--- use the sum function
instead, which is much simpler and faster, i.e., s=sum(a)).
11.4. Indexing Multiple Elements with Ranges
Unlike many other languages, S-Lang permits arrays to be indexed by
other integer arrays. Suppose that a is a 1-d array of 10 doubles. Now
consider:
i = [6:8];
b = a[i];
Here, i is a 1-dimensional range array of three integers with i[0]
equal to 6, i[1] equal to 7, and i[2] equal to 8. The statement b =
a[i]; will create a 1-d array of three doubles and assign it to b.
The zeroth element of b, b[0] will be set to the sixth element of a,
or a[6], and so on. In fact, these two simple statements are equiva-
lent to
b = Double_Type [3];
b[0] = a[6];
b[1] = a[7];
b[2] = a[8];
except that using an array of indices is not only much more conve-
nient, but executes much faster.
More generally, one may use an index array to specify which elements
are to participate in a calculation. For example, consider
a = Double_Type [1000];
i = [0:499];
j = [500:999];
a[i] = -1.0;
a[j] = 1.0;
This creates an array of 1000 doubles and sets the first 500 elements
to -1.0 and the last 500 to 1.0. Actually, one may do away with the i
and j variables altogether and use
a = Double_Type [1000];
a[[0:499]] = -1.0;
a[[500:999]] = 1.0;
It is important to note that the syntax requires the use of the double
square brackets, and in particular that a[[0:499]] is not the same as
a[0:499]. In fact, the latter will generate a syntax error.
Index-arrays are not contrained to be one-dimensional arrays. Suppose
that I represents a multidimensional index array, and that A is the
array to be indexed. Then what does A[I] represent? Its value will be
an array of the same type as A, but with the dimensionality of I. For
example,
a = 1.0*[1:10];
i = _reshape ([4,5,6,7,8,9], [2,3]);
defines a to be a 10 element array of doubles, and i to be 2x3 array
of integers. Then a[i] will be a 2x3 array of doubles with elements:
a[4] a[5] a[6]
a[7] a[8] a[9]
Often, it is convenient to use a ``rubber'' range to specify indices.
For example, a[[500:]] specifies all elements of a whose index is
greater than or equal to 500. Similarly, a[[:499]] specifies the first
500 elements of a. Finally, a[[:]] specifies all the elements of a.
The latter form may also be written as a[*].
One should be careful when using index arrays with negative elements.
As pointed out above, a negative index is used to index from the end
of the array. That is, a[-1] refers to the last element of a. How
should a[[[0:-1]] be interpreted?
In version 1 of the interpreter, when used in an array indexing
context, a construct such as [0:-1] was taken to mean from the first
element through the last. While this might seem like a convenient
shorthand, in retrospect it was a bad idea. For this reason, the
meaning of a ranges over negative valued indices was changed in
version 2 of the interpreter as follows: First the index-range gets
expanded to an array of indices according to the rules for range
arrays described above. Then if any of the resulting indices are
negative, they are interpreted as indices from the end of the array.
For example, if a is an array of 10 elements, then a[[-2:3]] is first
expanded to a[[-2,-1,0,1,2,3]], and then to the 6 element array
[ a[8], a[9], a[0], a[1], a[2], a[3] ]
So, what does a[[0:-1]] represent in the new interpretation? Since
[0:-1] expands to an empty array, a[[0:-1]] will also produce an empty
array.
Indexing of multidimensional arrays using ranges works similarly.
Suppose a is a 100 by 100 array of doubles. Then the expression a[0,
*] specifies all elements in the zeroth row. Similarly, a[*, 7]
specifies all elements in the seventh column. Finally, a[[3:5],[6:12]]
specifies the 3 by 7 region consisting of rows 3, 4, and 5, and
columns 6 through 12 of a.
Before leaving this section, a few examples are presented to
illustrate some of these points.
The ``trace'' of a matrix is an important concept that occurs
frequently in linear algebra. The trace of a 2d matrix is given by the
sum of its diagonal elements. Consider the creation of a function that
computes the trace of such a matrix.
The most straightforward implementation of such a function uses an
explicit loop:
define array_trace (a, n)
{
variable s = 0, i;
for (i = 0; i < n; i++) s += a[i, i];
return s;
}
Better yet is to recognize that the diagonal elements of an n by n
array are given by an index array I with elements 0, n+1, 2*n+2, ...,
n*n-1, or more precisely as
[0:n*n-1:n+1]
Hence the above may be written more simply as
define array_trace (a, n)
{
return sum (a[[0:n*n-1:n+1]]);
}
The following example creates a 10 by 10 integer array, sets its
diagonal elements to 5, and then computes the trace of the array:
a = Integer_Type [10, 10];
a[[0:99:11]] = 5;
the_trace = array_trace(a, 10);
In the previous examples, the size of the array was passed as an
additional argument. This is unnecessary because the size may be
obtained from array itself by using the array_shape function. For
example, the following function may be used to obtain the indices of
the diagonal element of an array:
define diag_indices (a)
{
variable dims = array_shape (a);
if (length (dims) != 2)
throw InvalidParmError, "Expecting a 2d array";
if (dims[0] != dims[1])
throw InvalidParmError, "Expecting a square array";
variable n = dims[0];
return [0:n*(n-1):n+1];
}
Using this function, the trace function may be written more simply as
define array_trace (a)
{
return sum (a[diag_indices(a)]);
}
Another example of this technique is a function that creates an n by n
unit matrix:
define unit_matrix (n)
{
variable a = Int_Type[n, n];
a[diag_indices(a)] = 1;
return a;
}
11.5. Arrays and Variables
When an array is created and assigned to a variable, the interpreter
allocates the proper amount of space for the array, initializes it,
and then assigns to the variable a reference to the array. So, a
variable that represents an array has a value that is really a
reference to the array. This has several consequences, most good and
some bad. It is believed that the advantages of this representation
outweigh the disadvantages. First, we shall look at the positive
aspects.
When a variable is passed to a function, it is always the value of the
variable that gets passed. Since the value of a variable representing
an array is a reference, a reference to the array gets passed. One
major advantage of this is rather obvious: it is a fast and efficient
way to pass the array. This also has another consequence that is
illustrated by the function
define init_array (a)
{
variable i;
variable n = length(a);
_for i (0, n-1, 1)
a[i] = some_function (i);
}
where some_function is a function that generates a scalar value to
initialize the ith element. This function can be used in the following
way:
variable X = Double_Type [100000];
init_array (X);
Since the array is passed to the function by reference, there is no
need to make a separate copy of the 100000 element array. As pointed
out above, this saves both execution time and memory. The other
salient feature to note is that any changes made to the elements of
the array within the function will be manifested in the array outside
the function. Of course, in this case this is a desirable side-effect.
To see the downside of this representation, consider:
a = Double_Type [10];
b = a;
a[0] = 7;
What will be the value of b[0]? Since the value of a is really a ref-
erence to the array of ten doubles, and that reference was assigned to
b, b also refers to the same array. Thus any changes made to the ele-
ments of a, will also be made implicitly to b.
This begs the question: If the assignment of a variable attached to an
an array to another variable results in the assignment of the same
array, then how does one make separate copies of the array? There are
several answers including using an index array, e.g., b = a[*];
however, the most natural method is to use the dereference operator:
a = Double_Type [10];
b = @a;
a[0] = 7;
In this example, a separate copy of a will be created and assigned to
b. It is very important to note that S-Lang never implicitly derefer-
ences an object. So, one must explicitly use the dereference operator.
This means that the elements of a dereferenced array are not them-
selves dereferenced. For example, consider dereferencing an array of
arrays, e.g.,
a = Array_Type [2];
a[0] = Double_Type [10];
a[1] = Double_Type [10];
b = @a;
In this example, b[0] will be a reference to the array that a[0] ref-
erences because a[0] was not explicitly dereferenced.
11.6. Using Arrays in Computations
Many functions and operations work transparently with arrays. For
example, if a and b are arrays, then the sum a + b is an array whose
elements are formed from the sum of the corresponding elements of a
and b. A similar statement holds for all other binary and unary
operations.
Let's consider a simple example. Suppose, that we wish to solve a set
of n quadratic equations whose coefficients are given by the 1-d
arrays a, b, and c. In general, the solution of a quadratic equation
will be two complex numbers. For simplicity, suppose that all we
really want is to know what subset of the coefficients, a, b, c,
correspond to real-valued solutions. In terms of for loops, we can
write:
index_array = Char_Type [n];
_for i (0, n-1, 1)
{
d = b[i]^2 - 4 * a[i] * c[i];
index_array [i] = (d >= 0.0);
}
In this example, the array index_array will contain a non-zero value
if the corresponding set of coefficients has a real-valued solution.
This code may be written much more compactly and with more clarity as
follows:
index_array = ((b^2 - 4 * a * c) >= 0.0);
Moreover, it executes about 20 times faster than the version using an
explicit loop.
S-Lang has a powerful built-in function called where. This function
takes an array of boolean values and returns an array of indices that
correspond to where the elements of the input array are non-zero. The
utility of this simple operation cannot be overstated. For example,
suppose a is a 1-d array of n doubles, and it is desired to set all
elements of the array whose value is less than zero to zero. One way
is to use a for loop:
_for i (0, n-1, 1)
if (a[i] < 0.0) a[i] = 0.0;
If n is a large number, this statement can take some time to execute.
The optimal way to achieve the same result is to use the where func-
tion:
a[where (a < 0.0)] = 0;
Here, the expression (a < 0.0) returns a boolean array whose dimen-
sions are the same size as a but whose elements are either 1 or 0,
according to whether or not the corresponding element of a is less
than zero. This array of zeros and ones is then passed to the where
function, which returns a 1-d integer array of indices that indicate
where the elements of a are less than zero. Finally, those elements of
a are set to zero.
Consider once more the example involving the set of n quadratic
equations presented above. Suppose that we wish to get rid of the
coefficients of the previous example that generated non-real
solutions. Using an explicit for loop requires code such as:
nn = 0;
_for i (0, n-1, 1)
if (index_array [i]) nn++;
tmp_a = Double_Type [nn];
tmp_b = Double_Type [nn];
tmp_c = Double_Type [nn];
j = 0;
_for i (0, n-1, 1)
{
if (index_array [i])
{
tmp_a [j] = a[i];
tmp_b [j] = b[i];
tmp_c [j] = c[i];
j++;
}
}
a = tmp_a;
b = tmp_b;
c = tmp_c;
Not only is this a lot of code, making it hard to digest, but it is
also clumsy and error-prone. Using the where function, this task is
trivial and executes in a fraction of the time:
i = where (index_array != 0);
a = a[i];
b = b[i];
c = c[i];
Most of the examples up till now assumed that the dimensions of the
array were known. Although the intrinsic function length may be used
to get the total number of elements of an array, it cannot be used to
get the individual dimensions of a multi-dimensional array. The
array_shape function may be used to determine the dimensionality of an
array. It may be used to determine the number of rows of an array as
follows:
define num_rows (a)
{
return array_shape (a)[0];
}
The number of columns may be obtained in a similar manner:
define num_cols (a)
{
variable dims = array_shape (a);
if (length(dims) > 1) return dims[1];
return 1;
}
The array_shape function may also be used to create an array that has
the same number of dimensions as another array:
define make_int_array (a)
{
return @Array_Type (Int_Type, array_shape (a));
}
Finally, the array_info function may be used to get additional
information about an array, such as its data type and size.
11.7. Arrays of Arrays: A Cautionary Note
Sometimes it is desirable to create an array of arrays. For example,
a = Array_Type[3];
a[0] = [1:10];
a[1] = [1:100];
a[2] = [1:1000];
will produce an array of the 3 arrays [1:10], [1:100], and [1:1000].
Index arrays may be used to access elements of an array of arrays:
a[[1,2]] will produce an array of arrays that consists of the elements
a[1] and a[2]. However, it is important to note that setting the ele-
ments of an array of arrays via an index array does not work as one
might naively expect. Consider the following:
b = Array_Type[3];
b[*] = a[[2,1,0]];
where a is the array of arrays given in the previous example. The
reader might expect b to have elements b[0]=a[2], b[1]=a[1], and
b[2]=a[0], and be surprised to learn that b[0]=b[1]=b[2]=a[[2,1,0]].
The reason for this is that, by definition, b is an array of arrays,
and even though a[[2,1,0]] is an array of arrays, it is first and
foremost an array, and it is that array that is assigned to the ele-
ments of b.
12. Associative Arrays
An associative array differs from an ordinary array in the sense that
its size is not fixed and that it is indexed by a string, called the
key. For example, consider:
A = Assoc_Type [Int_Type];
A["alpha"] = 1;
A["beta"] = 2;
A["gamma"] = 3;
Here, A has been assigned to an associative array of integers
(Int_Type) and then three keys were been added to the array.
As the example suggests, an associative array may be created using one
of the following forms:
Assoc_Type [type] Assoc_Type [type, default-value] Assoc_Type []
The last form returns an un-typed associative array capable of storing
values of any type.
The form involving a default-value is useful for associating a default
value with non-existent array members. This feature is explained in
more detail below.
There are several functions that are specially designed to work with
associative arrays. These include:
o assoc_get_keys, which returns an ordinary array of strings
containing the keys of the array.
o assoc_get_values, which returns an ordinary array of the values of
the associative array. If the associative array is un-typed, then
an array of Any_Type objects will be returned.
o assoc_key_exists, which can be used to determine whether or not a
key exists in the array.
o assoc_delete_key, which may be used to remove a key (and its value)
from the array.
To illustrate the use of an associative array, consider the problem of
counting the number of repeated occurrences of words in a list. Let
the word list be represented as an array of strings given by
word_list. The number of occurrences of each word may be stored in an
associative array as follows:
a = Assoc_Type [Int_Type];
foreach word (word_list)
{
if (0 == assoc_key_exists (a, word))
a[word] = 0;
a[word]++; % same as a[word] = a[word] + 1;
}
Note that assoc_key_exists was necessary to determine whether or not a
word was already added to the array in order to properly initialize
it. However, by creating the associative array with a default value of
0, the above code may be simplified to
variable a, word;
a = Assoc_Type [Int_Type, 0];
foreach word (word_list)
a[word]++;
Associative arrays are extremely useful and have may other
applications. Whenever there is a one to one mapping between a string
and some object, one should always consider using an associative array
to represent the mapping. To illustrate this point, consider the
following code fragment:
define call_function (name, arg)
{
if (name == "foo") return foo (arg);
if (name == "bar") return bar (arg);
.
.
if (name == "baz") return baz (arg);
throw InvalidParmError;
}
This represents a mapping between names and functions. Such a mapping
may be written in terms of an associative array as follows:
private define invalid_fun (arg) { throw InvalidParmError; }
Fun_Map = Assoc_Type[Ref_Type, &invalid_fun];
define add_function (name, fun)
{
Fun_Map[name] = fun;
}
add_function ("foo", &foo);
add_function ("bar", &bar);
.
.
add_function ("baz", &baz);
define call_function (name, arg)
{
return (@Fun_Map[name])(arg);
}
The most redeeming feature of the version involving the series of if
statements is that it is easy to understand. However, the version
involving the associative array has two significant advantages over
the former. Namely, the function lookup will be much faster with a
time that is independent of the item being searched, and it is exten-
sible in the sense that additional functions may be added at run-time,
e.g.,
add_function ("bing", &bing);
13. Structures and User-Defined Types
A structure is a heterogeneous container object, i.e., it is an object
with elements whose values do not have to be of the same data type.
The elements or fields of a structure are named, and one accesses a
particular field of the structure via the field name. This should be
contrasted with an array whose values are of the same type, and whose
elements are accessed via array indices.
A user-defined data type is a structure with a fixed set of fields
defined by the user.
13.1. Defining a Structure
The struct keyword is used to define a structure. The syntax for this
operation is:
struct {field-name-1, field-name-2, ... field-name-N};
This creates and returns a structure with N fields whose names are
specified by field-name-1, field-name-2, ..., field-name-N. When a
structure is created, the values of its fields are initialized to
NULL.
For example,
variable t = struct { city_name, population, next };
creates a structure with three fields and assigns it to the variable
t.
Alternatively, a structure may be created by dereferencing
Struct_Type. Using this technique, the above structure may be created
using one of the two forms:
t = @Struct_Type ("city_name", "population", "next");
t = @Struct_Type (["city_name", "population", "next"]);
This approach is useful when creating structures dynamically where one
does not know the name of the fields until run-time.
Like arrays, structures are passed around by reference. Thus, in the
above example, the value of t is a reference to the structure. This
means that after execution of
u = t;
both t and u refer to the same underlying structure, since only the
reference was copied by the assignment. To actually create a new copy
of the structure, use the dereference operator, e.g.,
variable u = @t;
It create new structure whose field names are identical to the old and
copies the field values to the new structure. If any of the values are
objects that are passed by reference, then only the references will be
copied. In other words,
t = struct{a};
t.a = [1:10];
u = @t;
will produce a structure u that references the same array as t.
13.2. Accessing the Fields of a Structure
The dot (.) operator is used to specify the particular field of
structure. If s is a structure and field_name is a field of the
structure, then s.field_name specifies that field of s. This
specification can be used in expressions just like ordinary variables.
Again, consider
t = struct { city_name, population, next };
described in the last section. Then,
t.city_name = "New York";
t.population = 13000000;
if (t.population > 200) t = t.next;
are all valid statements involving the fields of t.
13.3. Linked Lists
One of the most important uses of structures is the creation of
dynamic data structures such as linked-lists. A linked-list is simply
a chain of structures that are linked together such that one structure
in the chain is the value of a field of the previous structure in the
chain. To be concrete, consider the structure discussed earlier:
t = struct { city_name, population, next };
and suppose that it is desired to create a linked-list of such objects
to store population data. The purpose of the next field is to provide
the link to the next structure in the chain. Suppose that there exists
a function, read_next_city, that reads city names and populations from
a file. Then the list may be created using:
define create_population_list ()
{
variable city_name, population, list_root, list_tail;
variable next;
list_root = NULL;
while (read_next_city (&city_name, &population))
{
next = struct {city_name, population, next };
next.city_name = city_name;
next.population = population;
next.next = NULL;
if (list_root == NULL)
list_root = next;
else
list_tail.next = next;
list_tail = next;
}
return list_root;
}
In this function, the variables list_root and list_tail represent the
beginning and end of the list, respectively. As long as read_next_city
returns a non-zero value, a new structure is created, initialized, and
then appended to the list via the next field of the list_tail struc-
ture. On the first time through the loop, the list is created via the
assignment to the list_root variable.
This function may be used as follows:
Population_List = create_population_list ();
if (Population_List == NULL)
throw RunTimeError, "List is empty";
Other functions may be created that manipulate the list. Here is one
that finds the city with the largest population:
define get_largest_city (list)
{
variable largest;
largest = list;
while (list != NULL)
{
if (list.population > largest.population)
largest = list;
list = list.next;
}
return largest.city_name;
}
vmessage ("%s is the largest city in the list",
get_largest_city (Population_List));
The get_largest_city is a typical example of how one traverses a lin-
ear linked-list by starting at the head of the list and successively
moves to the next element of the list via the next field.
In the previous example, a while loop was used to traverse the linked
list. It is also possible to use a foreach loop for this:
define get_largest_city (list)
{
variable largest, elem;
largest = list;
foreach elem (list)
{
if (elem.population > largest.population)
largest = elem;
}
return largest.city_name;
}
Here a foreach loop has been used to walk the list via its next field.
If the field name linking the elements was not called next, then it
would have been necessary to use the using form of the foreach state-
ment. For example, if the field name implementing the linked list was
next_item, then
foreach item (list) using ("next_item")
{
.
.
}
would have been used. In other words, unless otherwise indicated via
the using clause, foreach walks the list using a field named next by
default.
Now consider a function that sorts the list according to population.
To illustrate the technique, a bubble-sort will be used, not because
it is efficient (it is not), but because it is simple, intuitive, and
provides another example of structure manipulation:
define sort_population_list (list)
{
variable changed;
variable node, next_node, last_node;
do
{
changed = 0;
node = list;
next_node = node.next;
last_node = NULL;
while (next_node != NULL)
{
if (node.population < next_node.population)
{
% swap node and next_node
node.next = next_node.next;
next_node.next = node;
if (last_node != NULL)
last_node.next = next_node;
if (list == node) list = next_node;
node = next_node;
next_node = node.next;
changed++;
}
last_node = node;
node = next_node;
next_node = next_node.next;
}
}
while (changed);
return list;
}
Note the test for equality between list and node, i.e.,
if (list == node) list = next_node;
It is important to appreciate the fact that the values of these vari-
ables are references to structures, and that the comparison only com-
pares the references and not the actual structures they reference. If
it were not for this, the algorithm would fail.
13.4. Defining New Types
A user-defined data type may be defined using the typedef keyword. In
the current implementation, a user-defined data type is essentially a
structure with a user-defined set of fields. For example, in the
previous section a structure was used to represent a city/population
pair. We can define a data type called Population_Type to represent
the same information:
typedef struct
{
city_name,
population
} Population_Type;
This data type can be used like all other data types. For example, an
array of Population_Type types can be created,
variable a = Population_Type[10];
and `populated' via expressions such as
a[0].city_name = "Boston";
a[0].population = 2500000;
The new type Population_Type may also be used with the typeof func-
tion:
if (Population_Type == typeof (a))
city = a.city_name;
The dereference @ may be used to create an instance of the new type:
a = @Population_Type;
a.city_name = "Calcutta";
a.population = 13000000;
Another feature that user-defined types possess is that the action of
the binary and unary operations may be defined for them. This idea is
discussed in more detail below.
13.5. Operator Overloading
The binary and unary operators may be extended to user-defined types.
To illustrate how this works, consider a data type that represents a
vector in 3-space:
typedef struct { x, y, z } Vector_Type;
and a function that instantiates such an object:
define vector_new (x, y, z)
{
variable v = @Vector_Type;
v.x = double(x); v.y = double(y); v.z = double(z);
return v;
}
This function may be used to define a function that adds two vectors
together:
define vector_add (v1, v2)
{
return vector_new (v1.x+v2.x, v1.y+v2.y, v1.z+v2.z);
}
Using these functions, three vectors representing the points (2,3,4),
(6,2,1), and (-3,1,-6) may be created using
V1 = vector_new (2,3,4);
V2 = vector_new (6,2,1);
V3 = vector_new (-3,1,-6);
and then added together via
V4 = vector_add (V1, vector_add (V2, V3));
The problem with the last statement is that it is not a very natural
way to express the addition of three vectors. It would be far better
to extend the action of the binary + operator to the Vector_Type
objects and then write the above sum more simply as
V4 = V1 + V2 + V3;
The __add_binary function defines the result of a binary operation
between two data types:
__add_binary (op, result-type, funct, typeA,typeB);
Here, op is a string representing any one of the binary operators
("+", "-", "*", "/", "==",...), and funct is reference to a function
that carries out the binary operation between objects of types typeA
and typeB to produce an object of type result-type.
This function may be used to extend the + operator to Vector_Type
objects:
__add_binary ("+", Vector_Type, &vector_add, Vector_Type, Vector_Type);
Similarly the subtraction and equality operators may be extended to
Vector_Type via
define vector_minus (v1, v2)
{
return vector_new (v1.x-v2.x, v1.y-v2.y, v1.z-v2.z);
}
__add_binary ("-", Vector_Type, &vector_minus, Vector_Type, Vector_Type);
define vector_eqs (v1, v2)
{
return (v1.x==v2.x) and (v1.y==v2.y) and (v1.z==v2.z);
}
__add_binary ("==", Char_Type, &vector_eqs, Vector_Type, Vector_Type);
permitting a statement such as
if (V2 != V1) V3 = V2 - V1;
The - operator is also an unary operator that is customarily used to
change the sign of an object. Unary operations may be extended to Vec-
tor_Type objects using the __add_unary function:
define vector_chs (v)
{
return vector_new (-v.x, -v.y, -v.z);
}
__add_unary ("-", Vector_Type, &vector_chs, Vector_Type);
A trivial example of the use of the unary minus is V4 = -V2.
It is interesting to consider the extension of the multiplication
operator * to Vector_Type. A vector may be multiplied by a scalar to
produce another vector. This can happen in two ways as reflected by
the following functions:
define vector_scalar_mul (v, a)
{
return vector_new (a*v.x, a*v.y, a*v.z);
}
define scalar_vector_mul (a, v)
{
return vector_new (a*v.x, a*v.y, a*v.z);
}
Here a represents the scalar, which can be any object that may be mul-
tiplied by a Double_Type, e.g., Int_Type, Float_Type, etc. Instead of
using multiple statements involving __add_binary to define the action
of Int_Type+Vector_Type, Float_Type+Vector_Type, etc, a single state-
ment using Any_Type to represent a ``wildcard'' type may be used:
__add_binary ("*", Vector_Type, &vector_scalar_mul, Vector_Type, Any_Type);
__add_binary ("*", Vector_Type, &scalar_vector_mul, Any_Type, Vector_Type);
There are a couple of natural possibilities for Vector_Type*Vec-
tor_Type: The cross-product defined by
define crossprod (v1, v2)
{
return vector_new (v1.y*v2.z-v1.z*v2.y,
v1.z*v2.x-v1.x*v2.z,
v1.x*v2.y-v1.y*v2.x);
}
and the dot-product:
define dotprod (v1, v2)
{
return v1.x*v2.x + v1.y*v2.y + v1.z*v2.z;
}
The binary * operator between two vector types may be defined to be
just one of these functions--- it cannot be extended to both. If the
dot-product is chosen then one would use
__add_binary ("*", Double_Type, &dotprod, Vector_Type_Type, Vector_Type);
Just because it is possible to define the action of a binary or unary
operator on an user-defined type, it is not always wise to do so. A
useful rule of thumb is to ask whether defining a particular operation
leads to more readable and maintainable code. For example, simply
looking at
c = a + b;
in isolation one can easily overlook the fact that a function such as
vector_add may be getting executed. Moreover, in cases where the
action is ambiguous such as Vector_Type*Vector_Type it may not be
clear what
c = a*b;
means unless one knows exactly what choice was made when extending the
* operator to the types. For this reason it may be wise to leave Vec-
tor_Type*Vector_Type undefined and use ``old-fashioned'' function
calls such as
c = dotprod (a, b);
d = crossprod (a, b);
to avoid the ambiguity altogether.
Finally, the __add_string function may be used to define the string
representation of an object. Examples involving the string
representation include:
message ("The value is " + string (V));
vmessage ("The result of %S+%S is %S", V1, V1, V1+V2);
str = "The value of V is $V"$;
For the Vector_Type one might want to use the string represention gen-
erated by
define vector_string (v)
{
return sprintf ("(%S,%S,%S)", v.x, v.y, v.z);
}
__add_string (Vector_Type, &vector_string);
14. Lists
Sometimes it is desirable to utilize an object that has many of the
properties of an array, but can also easily grow or shrink upon
demand. The List_Type object has such properties.
An empty list may be created either by the list_new function or more
simply using curly braces, e.g.,
list = {};
More generally a list of objects may be created by simply enclosing
them in braces. For example,
list = { "hello", 7, 3.14, {&sin, &cos}}
specifies a list of 4 elements, where the last element is also a list.
The number of items in a list may be obtained using the length func-
tion. For the above list, length(list) will return 4.
One may examine the contents of the list using an array index
notation. For the above example, list[0] refers to the zeroth element
of the list ("hello" in this case). Similarly,
list[1] = [1,2,3];
changes the first element of the list (7) to the array [1,2,3]. Also
as the case for arrays one may index from the end of the list using
negative indices, e.g., list[-1] refers to the last element of the
list.
The functions list_insert and list_append may be used to add items to
a list. In particular, list_insert(list,obj,nth) will insert the
object obj into the list at the nth position. Similarly,
list_append(list,obj,nth) will insert the object obj into the list
right after nth position. If
list = { "hello", 7, 3.14, {&sin, &cos}}
then
list_insert (list, 0, "hi");
list_append (list, 0, "there");
list_insert (list, -1, "before");
list_append (list, -1, "after");
will result in the list
{"hi", "there", "hello", 7, 3.14, "before", {&sin,&cos}, "after"}
One might be tempted to use
list = {"hi", list};
to insert "hi" at the head of the list. However, this simply creates a
new list of two items: hi and the original list.
Items may be removed from a list via the list_delete function, which
deletes the item from the specified position and shrinks the list. In
the context of the above example,
list_delete (list, 2);
will shrink the list to
{"hi", "there", 7, 3.14, "before", {&sin,&cos}, "after"}
Another way of removing items from the list is to use the list_pop
function. The main difference between it and list_delete is that
list_pop returns the deleted item. For example,
item = list_pop (list, -2);
would reduce the list to
{"hi", "there", 7, 3.14, "before", "after"}
and assign {&sin,&cos} to item. If the position parameter to list_pop
is left unspecified, then the position will default to the zeroth,
i.e., list_pop(list) is equaivalent to list_pop(list,0).
To copy a list, use the dereference operator @:
new_list = @list;
Keep in mind that this does not perform a so-called deep copy. If any
of the elements of the list are objects that are assigned by refer-
ence, only the references will be copied.
The list_reverse function may be used to reverse the elements of a
list. Note that this does not create a new list. To create new list
that is the reverse of another, copy the original using the
dereference operator (@) and reverse that, i.e.,
new_list = list_reverse (@list);
15. Error Handling
All non-trivial programs or scripts must be deal with the possibility
of run-time errors. In fact, one sign of a seasoned programmer is that
such a person pays particular attention to error handling. This
chapter presents some techniques for handling errors using S-Lang.
First the traditional method of using return values to indicate errors
will be discussed. Then attention will turn to S-Lang's more powerful
exception handling mechanisms.
15.1. Traditional Error Handling
The simplist and perhaps most common mechanism for signaling a failure
or error in a function is for the function to return an error code,
e.g.,
define write_to_file (file, str)
{
variable fp = fopen (file, "w");
if (fp == NULL)
return -1;
if (-1 == fputs (str, fp))
return -1;
if (-1 == fclose (fp))
return -1;
return 0;
}
Here, the write_to_file function returns 0 if successful, or -1 upon
failure. It is up to the calling routine to check the return value of
write_to_file and act accordingly. For instance:
if (-1 == write_to_file ("/tmp/foo", "bar"))
{
() = fprintf (stderr, "Write failed\n");
exit (1);
}
The main advantage of this technique is in its simplicity. The
weakness in this approach is that the return value must be checked for
every function that returns information in this way. A more subtle
problem is that even minor changes to large programs can become
unwieldy. To illustrate the latter aspect, consider the following
function which is supposed to be so simple that it cannot fail:
define simple_function ()
{
do_something_simple ();
more_simple_stuff ();
}
Since the functions called by simple_function are not supposed to
fail, simple_function itself cannot fail and there is no return value
for its callers to check:
define simple ()
{
simple_function ();
another_simple_function ();
}
Now suppose that the function do_something_simple is changed in some
way that could cause it to fail from time to time. Such a change could
be the result of a bug-fix or some feature enhancement. In the tradi-
tional error handling approach, the function would need to be modified
to return an error code. That error code would have to be checked by
the calling routine simple_function and as a result, it can now fail
and must return an error code. The obvious effect is that a tiny
change in one function can be felt up the entire call chain. While
making the appropriate changes for a small program can be a trivial
task, for a large program this could be a major undertaking opening
the possibility of introducing additional errors along the way. In a
nutshell, this is a code maintenance issue. For this reason, a veteran
programmer using this approach to error handling will consider such
possibilities from the outset and allow for error codes the first time
regardless of whether the functions can fail or not, e.g.,
define simple_function ()
{
if (-1 == do_something_simple ())
return -1;
if (-1 == more_simple_stuff ())
return -1;
return 0;
}
define simple ()
{
if (-1 == simple_function ())
return -1;
if (-1 == another_simple_function ())
return -1;
return 0;
}
Although latter code containing explicit checks for failure is more
robust and more easily maintainable than the former, it is also less
readable. Moreover, since return values are now checked the code will
execute somewhat slower than the code that lacks such checks. There
is also no clean separation of the error handling code from the other
code. This can make it difficult to maintain if the error handling
semantics of a function change. The next section discusses another
approach to error handling that tries to address these issues.
15.2. Error Handling through Exceptions
This section describes S-Lang's exception model. The idea is that
when a function encounters an error, instead of returning an error
code, it simply gives up and throws an exception. This idea will be
fleshed out in what follows.
15.2.1. Introduction to Exceptions
Consider the write_to_file function used in the previous section but
adapted to throw an exception:
define write_to_file (file, str)
{
variable fp = fopen (file, "w");
if (fp == NULL)
throw OpenError;
if (-1 == fputs (str, fp))
throw WriteError;
if (-1 == fclose (fp))
throw WriteError;
}
Here the throw statement has been used to generate the appropriate
exception, which in this case is either an OpenError exception or a
WriteError exception. Since the function now returns nothing (no error
code), it may be called as
write_to_file ("/tmp/foo", "bar");
next_statement;
As long as the write_to_file function encounters no errors, control
passes from write_to_file to next_statement.
Now consider what happens when the function encounters an error. For
concreteness assume that the fopen function failed causing
write_to_file to throw the OpenError exception. The write_to_file
function will stop execution after executing the throw statement and
return to its caller. Since no provision has been made to handle the
exception, next_statement will not execute and control will pass to
the previous caller on the call stack. This process will continue
until the exception is either handled or until control reaches the
top-level at which point the interpreter will terminate. This process
is known as unwinding of the call stack.
An simple exception handler may be created through the use of a try-
catch statement, such as
try
{
write_to_file ("/tmp/foo", "bar");
}
catch OpenError:
{
message ("*** Warning: failed to open /tmp/foo.");
}
next_statement;
The above code works as follows: First the statement (or statements)
inside the try-block are executed. As long as no exception occurs,
once they have executed, control will pass on to next_statement, skip-
ping the catch statement(s).
If an exception occurs while executing the statements in the try-
block, any remaining statements in the block will be skipped and
control will pass to the ``catch'' portion of the exception handler.
This may consist of one or more catch statements and an optional
finally statement. Each catch statement specifies a list of exceptions
it will handle as well as the code that is to be excecuted when a
matching exception is caught. If a matching catch statement is found
for the exception, the exception will be cleared and the code
associated with the catch statement will get executed. Control will
then pass to next_statement (or first to the code in an optional
finally block).
Catch-statements are tested against the exception in the order that
they appear. Once a matching catch statement is found, the search will
terminate. If no matching catch-statement is found, an optional
finally block will be processed, and the call-stack will continue to
unwind until either a matching exception handler is found or the
interpreter terminates.
In the above example, an exception handler was established for the
OpenError exception. The error handling code for this exception will
cause a warning message to be displayed. Execution will resume at
next_statement.
Now suppose that write_to_file successfully opened the file, but that
for some reason, e.g., a full disk, the actual write operation failed.
In such a case, write_to_file will throw a WriteError exception
passing control to the caller. The file will remain on the disk but
not fully written. An exception handler can be added for WriteError
that removes the file:
try
{
write_to_file ("/tmp/foo", "bar");
}
catch OpenError:
{
message ("*** Warning: failed to open /tmp/foo.");
}
catch WriteError:
{
() = remove ("/tmp/foo");
message ("*** Warning: failed to write to /tmp/foo");
}
next_statement;
Here the exception handler for WriteError uses the remove intrinsic
function to delete the file and then issues a warning message. Note
that the remove intrinsic uses the traditional error handling mecha-
nism--- in the above example its return status has been discarded.
Above it was assumed that failure to write to the file was not
critical allowing a warning message to suffice upon failure. Now
suppose that it is important for the file to be written but that it is
still desirable for the file to be removed upon failure. In this
scenario, next_statement should not get executed upon failure. This
can be achieved as follows:
try
{
write_to_file ("/tmp/foo", "bar");
}
catch WriteError:
{
() = remove ("/tmp/foo");
throw WriteError;
}
next_statement;
Here the exception handler for WriteError removes the file and then
re-throws the exception.
15.2.2. Obtaining information about the exception
When an exception is generated, an exception object is thrown. The
object is a structure containing the following fields:
error
The exception error code (Int_Type).
descr
A brief description of the error (String_Type).
file
The filename containing the code that generated the exception
(String_Type).
line
The line number where the exception was thrown (Int_Type).
function
The name of the currently executing function, or NULL if at top-
level (String_Type).
message
A text message that may provide more information about the
exception (String_Type).
object
A user-defined object.
If it is desired to have information about the exception, then an
alternative form of the try statement must be used:
try (e)
{
% try-block code
}
catch SomeException: { code ... }
If an exception occurs while executing the code in the try-block, then
the variable e will be assigned the value of the exception object. As
a simple example, suppose that the file foo.sl consists of:
define invert_x (x)
{
if (x == 0)
throw DivideByZeroError;
return 1/x;
}
and that the code is called using
try (e)
{
y = invert_x (0);
}
catch DivideByZeroError:
{
vmessage ("Caught %s, generated by %s:%d\n",
e.descr, e.file, e.line);
vmessage ("message: %s\nobject: %S\n",
e.message, e.object);
y = 0;
}
When this code is executed, it will generate the message:
Caught Divide by Zero, generated by foo.sl:5
message: Divide by Zero
object: NULL
In this case, the value of the message field was assigned a default
value. The reason that the object field is NULL is that no object was
specified when the exception was generated. In order to throw an
object, a more complex form of throw statement must be used:
throw exception-name [, message [, object ] ]
where the square brackets indicate optional parameters
To illustrate this form, suppose that invert_x is modified to accept
an array object:
private define invert_x(x)
{
variable i = where (x == 0);
if (length (i))
throw DivideByZeroError,
"Array contains elements that are zero", i;
return 1/x;
}
In this case, the message field of the exception object will contain
the string "Array contains elements that are zero" and the object
field will be set to the indices of the zero elements.
15.2.3. The finally block
The full form of the try-catch statement obeys the following syntax:
try [(opt-e)] { try-block-statements } catch Exception-List-1: {
catch-block-1-statements } . . catch Exception-List-N: { catch-
block-N-statements } [ finally { finally-block-statements } ]
Here an exception-list is simply a list of exceptions such as:
catch OSError, RunTimeError:
The last clause of a try-statement is the finally-block, which is
optional and is introduced using the finally keyword. If the try-
statement contains no catch-clauses, then it must specify a finally-
clause, otherwise a syntax error will result.
If the finally-clause is present, then its corresponding statements
will be executed regardless of whether an exception occurs. If an
exception occurs while executing the statements in the try-block, then
the finally-block will execute after the code in any of the catch-
blocks. The finally-clause is useful for freeing any resources (file
handles, etc) allocated by the try-block regardless of whether an
exception has occurred.
15.2.4. Creating new exceptions: the Exception Hierarchy
The following table gives the class hierarchy for the built-in
exceptions.
AnyError
OSError
MallocError
ImportError
ParseError
SyntaxError
DuplicateDefinitionError
UndefinedNameError
RunTimeError
InvalidParmError
TypeMismatchError
UserBreakError
StackError
StackOverflowError
StackUnderflowError
ReadOnlyError
VariableUnitializedError
NumArgsError
IndexError
UsageError
ApplicationError
InternalError
NotImplementedError
LimitExceededError
MathError
DivideByZeroError
ArithOverflowError
ArithUnderflowError
DomainError
IOError
WriteError
ReadError
OpenError
DataError
UnicodeError
InvalidUTF8Error
UnknownError
The above table shows that the root class of all exceptions is
AnyError. This means that a catch block for AnyError will catch any
exception. The OSError, ParseError, and RunTimeError exceptions are
subclasses of the AnyError class. Subclasses of OSError include
MallocError, and ImportError. Hence a handler for the OSError
exception will catch MallocError but not ParseError since the latter
is not a subclass of OSError.
The user may extend this tree with new exceptions using the
new_exception function. This function takes three arguments:
new_exception (exception-name, baseclass, description);
The exception-name is the name of the exception, baseclass represents
the node in the exception hierarchy where it is to be placed, and
description is a string that provides a brief description of the
exception.
For example, suppose that you are writing some code that processes
numbers stored in a binary format. In particular, assume that the
format specifies that data be stored in a specific byte-order, e.g.,
in big-endian form. Then it might be useful to extend the DataError
exception with EndianError. This is easily accomplished via
new_exception ("EndianError", DataError, "Invalid byte-ordering");
This will create a new exception object called EndianError subclassed
on DataError, and code that catches the DataError exception will addi-
tionally catch the EndianError exception.
16. Loading Files: evalfile, autoload, and require
17. Modules
17.1. Introduction
A module is a shared object that may be dynamically linked into the
interpreter at run-time to provide the interpreter with additional
intrinsic functions and variables. Several modules are distributed
with the stock version of the S-Lang library, including a pcre module
that allows the interpreter to make use of the Perl Compatible Regular
Expression library, a png module that allows the interpreter to easily
read and write PNG files, and a rand module for producing random
numbers. There are also a number of modules for the interpreter that
are not distributed with the library. See
http://www.jedsoft.org/slang/modules/ for links to some of those.
17.2. Using Modules
In order to make use of a module, it must first be ``imported'' into
the interpreter. There are two ways to go about this. One is to use
the import function to dynamically link-in the specified module, e.g.,
import ("pcre");
will dynamically link to the pcre module and make its symbols avail-
able to the interpreter using the active namespace. However, this is
not the preferred method for loading a module.
Module writers are encouraged to distribute a module with a file of S-
Lang code that performs the actual import of the module. Rather than a
user making direct use of the import function, the preferred method of
loading the modules is to load that file instead. For example the pcre
module is distributed with a file called pcre.sl that contains little
more than the import("pcre") statement. To use the pcre module, load
pcre.sl, e.g.,
require ("pcre");
The main advantage of this approach to loading a module is that the
functionality provided by the module may be split between intrinsic
functions in the module proper, and interpreted functions contained in
the .sl file. In such a case, loading the module via import would only
provide partial functionality. The png module provides a simple
example of this concept. The current version of the png module
consists of a couple intrinsic functions (png_read and png_write)
contained in the shared object (png-module.so), and a number of other
interpreted S-Lang functions defined in png.sl. Using the import
statement to load the module would miss the latter set of functions.
In some cases, the symbols in a module may conflict with symbols that
are currently defined by the interpreter. In order to avoid the
conflict, it may be necessary to load the module into its own
namespace and access its symbols via the namespace prefix. For
example, the GNU Scientific Library Special Function module, gslsf,
defines a couple hundred functions, some with common names such as
zeta. In order to avoid any conflict, it is recommended that the
symbols from such a module be imported into a separate namespace. This
may be accomplished by specifying the namespace as a second argument
to the require function, e.g.,
require ("gslsf", "gsl");
.
.
y = gsl->zeta(x);
This form requires that the module's symbols be accessed via the
namespace qualifier "gsl->".
18. File Input/Output
S-Lang provides built-in support for two different I/O facilities.
The simplest interface is modeled upon the C language stdio interface
and consists of functions such as fopen, fgets, etc. The other
interface is modeled on a lower level POSIX interface consisting of
functions such as open, read, etc. In addition to permitting more
control, the lower level interface permits one to access network
objects as well as disk files.
For reading data formatted in text files, e.g., columns of numbers,
then do not overlook the high-level routines in the slsh library. In
particular, the readascii function is quite flexible and can read data
from text files that are formatted in a variety of ways. For data
stored in a standard binary format such as HDF or FITS, then the
corresponding modules should be used.
18.1. Input/Output via stdio
18.1.1. Stdio Overview
The stdio interface consists of the following functions:
o fopen: opens a file for reading or writing.
o fclose: closes a file opened by fopen.
o fgets: reads a line from a file.
o fputs: writes text to a file.
o fprintf: writes formatted text to a file.
o fwrite: writes one of more objects to a file.
o fread: reads a specified number of objects from a file.
o fread_bytes: reads a specified number of bytes from a file and
returns them as a string.
o feof: tests if a file pointer is at the end of the file.
o ferror: tests whether or not the stream associated with a file has
an error.
o clearerr: clears the end-of-file and error indicators for a stream.
o fflush, forces all buffered data associated with a stream to be
written out.
o ftell: queries the file position indicator a the stream.
o fseek: sets the position of a file position indicator of the
stream.
o fgetslines: reads all the lines from a text file and returns them
as an array of strings.
In addition, the interface supports the popen and pclose functions on
systems where the corresponding C functions are available.
Before reading or writing to a file, it must first be opened using the
fopen function. The only exceptions to this rule involve use of the
pre-opened streams: stdin, stdout, and stderr. fopen accepts two
arguments: a file name and a string argument that indicates how the
file is to be opened, e.g., for reading, writing, update, etc. It
returns a File_Type stream object that is used as an argument to all
other functions of the stdio interface. Upon failure, it returns NULL.
See the reference manual for more information about fopen.
18.1.2. Stdio Examples
In this section, some simple examples of the use of the stdio
interface is presented. It is important to realize that all the
functions of the interface return something, and that return value
must be handled in some way by the caller.
The first example involves writing a function to count the number of
lines in a text file. To do this, we shall read in the lines, one by
one, and count them:
define count_lines_in_file (file)
{
variable fp, line, count;
fp = fopen (file, "r"); % Open the file for reading
if (fp == NULL)
throw OpenError, "$file failed to open"$;
count = 0;
while (-1 != fgets (&line, fp))
count++;
() = fclose (fp);
return count;
}
Note that &line was passed to the fgets function. When fgets returns,
line will contain the line of text read in from the file. Also note
how the return value from fclose was handled (discarded in this case).
Although the preceding example closed the file via fclose, there is no
need to explicitly close a file because the interpreter will
automatically close a file when it is no longer referenced. Since the
only variable to reference the file is fp, it would have automatically
been closed when the function returned.
Suppose that it is desired to count the number of characters in the
file instead of the number of lines. To do this, the while loop could
be modified to count the characters as follows:
while (-1 != fgets (&line, fp))
count += strlen (line);
The main difficulty with this approach is that it will not work for
binary files, i.e., files that contain null characters. For such
files, the file should be opened in binary mode via
fp = fopen (file, "rb");
and then the data read using the fread function:
while (-1 != fread (&line, Char_Type, 1024, fp))
count += length (line);
The fread function requires two additional arguments: the type of
object to read (Char_Type in the case), and the number of such objects
to be read. The function returns the number of objects actually read
in the form of an array of the specified type, or -1 upon failure.
Sometimes it is more convenient to obtain the data from a file in the
form of a character string instead of an array of characters. The
fread_bytes function may be used in such situations. Using this
function, the equivalent of the above loop is
while (-1 != fread_bytes (&line, 1024, fp))
count += bstrlen (line);
The foreach construct also works with File_Type objects. For example,
the number of characters in a file may be counted via
foreach ch (fp) using ("char")
count++;
Similarly, one can count the number of lines using:
foreach line (fp) using ("line")
{
num_lines++;
count += strlen (line);
}
Often one is not interested in trailing whitespace in the lines of a
file. To have trailing whitespace automatically stripped from the
lines as they are read in, use the "wsline" form, e.g.,
foreach line (fp) using ("wsline")
{
.
.
}
Finally, it should be mentioned that none of these examples should be
used to count the number of bytes in a file when that information is
more readily accessible by another means. For example, it is
preferable to get this information via the stat_file function:
define count_chars_in_file (file)
{
variable st;
st = stat_file (file);
if (st == NULL)
throw IOError, "stat_file failed";
return st.st_size;
}
18.2. POSIX I/O
18.3. Advanced I/O techniques
The previous examples illustrate how to read and write objects of a
single data-type from a file, e.g.,
num = fread (&a, Double_Type, 20, fp);
would result in a Double_Type[num] array being assigned to a if suc-
cessful. However, suppose that the binary data file consists of num-
bers in a specified byte-order. How can one read such objects with the
proper byte swapping? The answer is to use the fread_bytes function to
read the objects as a (binary) character string and then unpack the
resulting string into the specified data type, or types. This process
is facilitated using the pack and unpack functions.
The pack function follows the syntax
BString_Type pack (format-string, item-list);
and combines the objects in the item-list according to format-string
into a binary string and returns the result. Likewise, the unpack
function may be used to convert a binary string into separate data
objects:
(variable-list) = unpack (format-string, binary-string);
The format string consists of one or more data-type specification
characters, and each may be followed by an optional decimal length
specifier. Specifically, the data-types are specified according to the
following table:
c char
C unsigned char
h short
H unsigned short
i int
I unsigned int
l long
L unsigned long
j 16 bit int
J 16 unsigned int
k 32 bit int
K 32 bit unsigned int
f float
d double
F 32 bit float
D 64 bit float
s character string, null padded
S character string, space padded
z character string, null padded
x a null pad character
A decimal length specifier may follow the data-type specifier. With
the exception of the s and S specifiers, the length specifier indi-
cates how many objects of that data type are to be packed or unpacked
from the string. When used with the s or S specifiers, it indicates
the field width to be used. If the length specifier is not present,
the length defaults to one.
With the exception of c, C, s, S, z, and x, each of these may be
prefixed by a character that indicates the byte-order of the object:
> big-endian order (network order)
< little-endian order
= native byte-order
The default is to use the native byte order.
Here are a few examples that should make this more clear:
a = pack ("cc", 'A', 'B'); % ==> a = "AB";
a = pack ("c2", 'A', 'B'); % ==> a = "AB";
a = pack ("xxcxxc", 'A', 'B'); % ==> a = "\0\0A\0\0B";
a = pack ("h2", 'A', 'B'); % ==> a = "\0A\0B" or "\0B\0A"
a = pack (">h2", 'A', 'B'); % ==> a = "\0\xA\0\xB"
a = pack ("<h2", 'A', 'B'); % ==> a = "\0B\0A"
a = pack ("s4", "AB", "CD"); % ==> a = "AB\0\0"
a = pack ("s4s2", "AB", "CD"); % ==> a = "AB\0\0CD"
a = pack ("S4", "AB", "CD"); % ==> a = "AB "
a = pack ("S4S2", "AB", "CD"); % ==> a = "AB CD"
When unpacking, if the length specifier is greater than one, then an
array of that length will be returned. In addition, trailing
whitespace and null characters are stripped when unpacking an object
given by the S specifier. Here are a few examples:
(x,y) = unpack ("cc", "AB"); % ==> x = 'A', y = 'B'
x = unpack ("c2", "AB"); % ==> x = ['A', 'B']
x = unpack ("x<H", "\0\xAB\xCD"); % ==> x = 0xCDABuh
x = unpack ("xxs4", "a b c\0d e f"); % ==> x = "b c\0"
x = unpack ("xxS4", "a b c\0d e f"); % ==> x = "b c"
18.3.1. Example: Reading /var/log/wtmp
Consider the task of reading the Unix system file /var/log/utmp, which
contains login records about who logged onto the system. This file
format is documented in section 5 of the online Unix man pages, and
consists of a sequence of entries formatted according to the C
structure utmp defined in the utmp.h C header file. The actual details
of the structure may vary from one version of Unix to the other. For
the purposes of this example, consider its definition under the Linux
operating system running on an Intel 32 bit processor:
struct utmp {
short ut_type; /* type of login */
pid_t ut_pid; /* pid of process */
char ut_line[12]; /* device name of tty - "/dev/" */
char ut_id[2]; /* init id or abbrev. ttyname */
time_t ut_time; /* login time */
char ut_user[8]; /* user name */
char ut_host[16]; /* host name for remote login */
long ut_addr; /* IP addr of remote host */
};
On this system, pid_t is defined to be an int and time_t is a long.
Hence, a format specifier for the pack and unpack functions is easily
constructed to be:
"h i S12 S2 l S8 S16 l"
However, this particular definition is naive because it does not allow
for structure padding performed by the C compiler in order to align
the data types on suitable word boundaries. Fortunately, the intrinsic
function pad_pack_format may be used to modify a format by adding the
correct amount of padding in the right places. In fact, pad_pack_for-
mat applied to the above format on an Intel-based Linux system pro-
duces the result:
"h x2 i S12 S2 x2 l S8 S16 l"
Here we see that 4 bytes of padding were added.
The other missing piece of information is the size of the structure.
This is useful because we would like to read in one structure at a
time using the fread function. Knowing the size of the various data
types makes this easy; however it is even easier to use the
sizeof_pack intrinsic function, which returns the size (in bytes) of
the structure described by the pack format.
So, with all the pieces in place, it is rather straightforward to
write the code:
variable format, size, fp, buf;
typedef struct
{
ut_type, ut_pid, ut_line, ut_id,
ut_time, ut_user, ut_host, ut_addr
} UTMP_Type;
format = pad_pack_format ("h i S12 S2 l S8 S16 l");
size = sizeof_pack (format);
define print_utmp (u)
{
() = fprintf (stdout, "%-16s %-12s %-16s %s\n",
u.ut_user, u.ut_line, u.ut_host, ctime (u.ut_time));
}
fp = fopen ("/var/log/utmp", "rb");
if (fp == NULL)
throw OpenError, "Unable to open utmp file";
() = fprintf (stdout, "%-16s %-12s %-16s %s\n",
"USER", "TTY", "FROM", "LOGIN@");
variable U = @UTMP_Type;
while (-1 != fread (&buf, Char_Type, size, fp))
{
set_struct_fields (U, unpack (format, buf));
print_utmp (U);
}
() = fclose (fp);
A few comments about this example are in order. First of all, note
that a new data type called UTMP_Type was created, although this was
not really necessary. The file was opened in binary mode, but this too
was optional because under a Unix system where there is no distinction
between binary and text modes. The print_utmp function does not print
all of the structure fields. Finally, last but not least, the return
values from fprintf and fclose were handled by discarding them.
19. slsh
slsh, also known as the S-Lang shell, is an application that is
included in the stock S-Lang distribution. As some binary
distributions include slsh as a separate package it must be installed
separately, e.g.,
apt-get install slsh
on Debian Linux systems. The use of slsh in its interactive mode was
discussed briefly in the ``Introduction''. This chapter concentrates
on the use of slsh for writing executable S-Lang scripts.
19.1. Running slsh
When run the --help command-line argument, slsh displays a brief usage
message:
# slsh --help
Usage: slsh [OPTIONS] [-|file [args...]]
--help Print this help
--version Show slsh version information
-e string Execute 'string' as S-Lang code
-g Compile with debugging code, tracebacks, etc
-n Don't load personal init file
--init file Use this file instead of ~/.slshrc
--no-readline Do not use readline
-i Force interactive input
-t Test mode. If slsh_main exists, do not call it
-v Show verbose loading messages
-Dname Define "name" as a preprocessor symbol
Note: - and -i are mutually exclusive
Default search path: /usr/local/share/slsh
When started with no arguments, slsh will start in interactive mode
and take input from the terminal. As the usage message indicates slsh
loads a personal initialization file called .slshrc (on non-Unix
systems, this file is called slsh.rc). The contents of this file must
be valid S-Lang code, but are otherwise arbitrary. One use of this
file is to define commonly used functions and to setup personal search
paths.
slsh will run in non-interactive mode when started with a file (also
known as a ``script'') as its first (non-option) command-line
argument. The rest of the arguments on the command line serve as
arguments for the script. The next section deals with the use of the
cmdopt routines for parsing those arguments.
slsh will read the script and feed it to the S-Lang interpreter for
execution. If the script defines a public function called slsh_main,
then slsh will call it after the script has been loaded. In this
sense, slsh_main is analogous to main in C or C++.
A typical slsh script is be structured as
#!/usr/bin/env slsh
.
.
define slsh_main ()
{
.
.
}
The first line of the script Unix-specific and should be familiar to
Unix users. Typically, the code before slsh_main will load any
required modules or packages, and define other functions to be used by
the script.
Although the use of slsh_main is not required, its use is strongly
urged for several reasons. In addition to lending uniformity to S-Lang
scripts, slsh_main is well supported by the S-Lang debugger (sldb) and
the S-Lang profiler (slprof), which look for slsh_main as a starting
point for script execution. Also as scripts necessarily do something
(otherwise they have no use), slsh's -t command-line option may be
used to turn off the automatic execution of slsh_main. This allows the
syntax of the entire script to be checked for errors instead of
running it.
19.2. Command line processing
The script's command-line arguments are availble to it via the __argc
and __argv intrinsic variables. Any optional arguments represented by
these variables may be parsed using slsh's cmdopt routines.
As a useful illustration, consider the script that the author uses to
rip tracks from CDs to OGG encoded files. The name of the script is
cd2ogg.sl. Running the script without arguments causes it to issue a
usage message:
Usage: cd2ogg.sl [options] device
Options:
--help This help
--work DIR Use DIR as working dir [/tmp/29848]
--root DIR Use DIR/GENRE as root for final output [/data/CDs]
--genre GENRE Use GENRE for output dir
--no-rip Skip rip stage
--no-normalize Skip normalizing stage
--no-encode Don't encode to ogg
--albuminfo PERFORMER/TITLE
Use PERFORMER/TITLE if audio.cddb is absent
As the message shows, some of the options require an argument while
others do not. The cd2ogg.sl script looks like:
#!/usr/bin/env slsh
require ("cmdopt");
.
.
private define exit_usage ()
{
() = fprintf (stderr, "Usage: %s [options] device\n",
path_basename (__argv[0]));
() = fprintf (stderr, "Options:\n");
.
.
exit (1);
}
private define parse_album_info (albuminfo)
{
...
}
define slsh_main ()
{
variable genre = NULL;
variable no_rip = 0;
variable no_normalize = 0;
variable no_encode = 0;
variable opts = cmdopt_new ();
opts.add ("help", &exit_usage);
opts.add ("device", &CD_Device; type="str");
opts.add ("work", &Work_Dir; type="str");
opts.add ("root", &Root_Dir; type="str");
opts.add ("genre", &genre; type="str");
opts.add ("albuminfo", &parse_album_info; type="str");
opts.add ("no-normalize", &no_normalize);
opts.add ("no-encode", &no_encode);
variable i = opts.process (__argv, 1);
if (i + 1 != __argc)
exit_usage ();
CD_Device = __argv[i];
.
.
}
There are several points that one should take from the above example.
First, to use the cmdopt interface it is necessary to load it. This
is accomplished using the require statement. Second, the above example
uses cmdopt's object-oriented style interface through the use of the
add and process methods of the cmdopt object created by the call to
cmdopt_new. Third, two of the command line options make use of
callback functions: the exit_usage function will get called when
--help appears on the command line, and the parse_album_info function
will get called to handle the --albuminfo option. Options such as
--no-encode do not take a value and the presence of such an option on
the command line causes the variable associated with the option to be
set to 1. Other options such as --genre will cause the variable
associated with them to be set of the value specified on the command-
line. Finally, the process method returns the index of __argv that
corresponds to ``non-option'' argument. In this case, for proper usage
of the script, that argument would correspond to device representing
the CD drive.
For more information about the cmdopt interface, see the documentation
for cmdopt_add:
slsh> help cmdopt_add
20. Debugging
There are several ways to debug a S-Lang script. When the interpreter
encounters an uncaught exception, it can generate a traceback report
showing where the error occurred and the values of local variables in
the function call stack frames at the time of the error. Often just
knowing where the error occurs is all that is required to correct the
problem. More subtle bugs may require a deeper analysis to diagnose
the problem. While one can insert the appropriate print statements in
the code to get some idea about what is going on, it may be simpler to
use the interactive debugger.
20.1. Tracebacks
When the value of the _traceback variable is non-zero, the interpreter
will generate a traceback report when it encounters an error. This
variable may be set by putting the line
_traceback = 1;
at the top of the suspect file. If the script is running in slsh, then
invoking slsh using the -g option will enable tracebacks:
slsh -g myscript.sl
If _traceback is set to a positive value, the values of local
variables will be printed in the traceback report. If set to a
negative integer, the values of the local variables will be absent.
Here is an example of a traceback report:
Traceback: error
***string***:1:verror:Run-Time Error
/grandpa/d1/src/jed/lib/search.sl:78:search_generic_search:Run-Time Error
Local Variables:
String_Type prompt = "Search forward:"
Integer_Type dir = 1
Ref_Type line_ok_fun = &_function_return_1
String_Type str = "ascascascasc"
Char_Type not_found = 1
Integer_Type cs = 0
/grandpa/d1/src/jed/lib/search.sl:85:search_forward:Run-Time Error
There are several ways to read this report; perhaps the simplest is to
read it from the bottom. This report says that on line 85 in search.sl
the search_forward function called the search_generic_search function.
On line 78 it called the verror function, which in turn called error.
The search_generic_search function contains 6 local variables whose
values at the time of the error are given by the traceback output. The
above example shows that a local variable called "not_found" had a
Char_Type value of 1 at the time of the error.
20.2. Using the sldb debugger
The interpreter contains a number of hooks that support a debugger.
sldb consists of a set of functions that use these hooks to implement
a simple debugger. Although written for slsh, the debugger may be used
by other S-Lang interpreters that permit the loading of slsh library
files. The examples presented here are given in the context of slsh.
In order to use the debugger, the code to to be debugged must be
loaded with debugging info enabled. This can be in done several ways,
depending upon the application embedding the interpreter.
For applications that support a command line, the simplest way to
access the debugger is to use the sldb function with the name of the
file to be debugged:
require ("sldb");
sldb ("foo.sl");
When called without an argument, sldb will prompt for input. This can
be useful for setting or removing breakpoints.
Another mechanism to access the debugger is to put
require ("sldb");
sldb_enable ();
at the top of the suspect file. Any files loaded by the file will also
be compiled with debugging support, making it unnecessary to add this
to all files.
If the file contains any top-level executable statements, the debugger
will display the line to be executed and prompt for input. If the
file does not contain any executable statements, the debugger will not
be activated until one of the functions in the file is executed.
As a concrete example, consider the following contrived slsh script
called buggy.sl:
define divide (a, b, i)
{
return a[i] / b;
}
define slsh_main ()
{
variable x = [1:5];
variable y = x*x;
variable i;
_for i (0, length(x), 1)
{
variable z = divide (x, y, i);
() = fprintf (stdout, "%g/%g = %g", x[i], y[i], z);
}
}
Running this via
slsh buggy.sl
yields
Expecting Double_Type, found Array_Type
./buggy.sl:13:slsh_main:Type Mismatch
More information may be obtained by using slsh's -g option to cause a
traceback report to be printed:
slsh -g buggy.sl
Expecting Double_Type, found Array_Type
Traceback: fprintf
./buggy.sl:13:slsh_main:Type Mismatch
Local variables for slsh_main:
Array_Type x = Integer_Type[5]
Array_Type y = Integer_Type[5]
Integer_Type i = 0
Array_Type z = Integer_Type[5]
Error encountered while executing slsh_main
From this one can see that the problem is that z is an array and not a
scalar as expected.
To run the program under debugger control, startup slsh and load the
file using the sldb function:
slsh> sldb ("./buggy.sl");
Note the use of "./" in the filename. This may be necessary if the
file is not in the slsh search path.
The above command causes execution to stop with the following
displayed:
slsh_main at ./buggy.sl:9
9 variable x = [1:5];
(sldb)
This shows that the debugger has stopped the script at line 9 of
buggy.sl and is waiting for input. The print function may be used to
print the value of an expression or variable. Using it to display the
value of x yields
(sldb) print x
Caught exception:Variable Uninitialized Error
(sldb)
This is because x has not yet been assigned a value and will not be
until line 9 has been executed. The next command may be used to exe-
cute the current line and stop at the next one:
(sldb) next
10 variable y = x*x;
(sldb)
The step command functions almost the same as next, except when a
function call is involved. In such a case, the next command will step
over the function call but step will cause the debugger to enter the
function and stop there.
Now the value of x may be displayed using the print command:
(sldb) print x
Integer_Type[5]
(sldb) print x[0]
1
(sldb) print x[-1]
5
(sldb)
The list command may be used to get a list of the source code around
the current line:
(sldb) list
5 return a[i] / b;
6 }
7 define slsh_main ()
8 {
9 variable x = [1:5];
10 variable y = x*x;
11 variable i;
12 _for i (0, length(x), 1)
13 {
14 variable z = divide (x, y, i);
15 () = fprintf (stdout, "%g/%g = %g", x[i], y[i], z);
The break function may be used to set a breakpoint. For example,
(sldb) break 15
breakpoint #1 set at ./buggy.sl:15
will set a break point at the line 15 of the current file.
The cont command may be used to continue execution until the next
break point:
(sldb) cont
Breakpoint 1, slsh_main
at ./buggy.sl:15
15 () = fprintf (stdout, "%g/%g = %g", x[i], y[i], z);
(sldb)
Using the next command produces:
Received Type Mismatch error. Entering the debugger
15 () = fprintf (stdout, "%g/%g = %g", x[i], y[i], z);
This shows that during the execution of line 15, a TypeMismatchError
was generated. Let's see what caused it:
(sldb) print x[i]
1
(sldb) print y[i]
1
(sldb) print z
Integer_Type[5]
This shows that the problem was caused by z being an array and not a
scalar--- something that was already known from the traceback report.
Now let's see why it is not a scalar. Start the program again and set
a breakpoint in the divide function:
slsh_main at ./buggy.sl:9
9 variable x = [1:5];
(sldb) break divide
breakpoint #1 set at divide
(sldb) cont
Breakpoint 1, divide
at ./buggy.sl:5
5 return a[i] / b;
(sldb)
The values of a[i]/b and b may be printed:
(sldb) print a[i]/b
Integer_Type[5]
(sldb) print b
Integer_Type[5]
From this it is easy to see that z is an array because b is an array.
The fix for this is to change line 5 to
z = a[i]/b[i];
The debugger supports several other commands. For example, the up and
down commands may be used to move up and down the stack-frames, and
where command may be used to display the stack-frames. These commands
are useful for examining the variables in the other frames:
(sldb) where
#0 ./buggy.sl:5:divide
#1 ./buggy.sl:14:slsh_main
(sldb) up
#1 ./buggy.sl:14:slsh_main
14 variable z = divide (x, y, i);
(sldb) print x
Integer_Type[5]
(sldb) down
#0 ./buggy.sl:5:divide
5 return a[i] / b;
(sldb) print z
Integer_Type[5]
On some operating systems, the debugger's watchfpu command may be used
to help isolate floating point exceptions. Consider the following
example:
define solve_quadratic (a, b, c)
{
variable d = b^2 - 4.0*a*c;
variable x = -b + sqrt (d);
return x / (2.0*a);
}
define print_root (a, b, c)
{
vmessage ("%f %f %f %f\n", a, b, c, solve_quadratic (a,b,c));
}
print_root (1,2,3);
Running it via slsh produces:
1.000000 2.000000 3.000000 nan
Now run it in the debugger:
<top-level> at ./example.sl:12
11 print_root (1,2,3);
(sldb) watchfpu FE_INVALID
(sldb) cont
*** FPU exception bits set: FE_INVALID
Entering the debugger.
solve_quadratic at ./t.sl:4
4 variable x = -b + sqrt (d);
This shows the the NaN was produced on line 4.
The watchfpu command may be used to watch for the occurrence of any
combination of the following exceptions
FE_DIVBYZERO
FE_INEXACT
FE_INVALID
FE_OVERFLOW
FE_UNDERFLOW
by the bitwise-or operation of the desired combination. For instance,
to track both FE_INVALID and FE_OVERFLOW, use:
(sldb) watchfpu FE_INVALID | FE_OVERFLOW
21. Profiling
21.1. Introduction
This chapter deals with the subject of writing efficient S-Lang code,
and using the S-Lang profiler to isolate places in the code that could
benefit from optimization.
The most important consideration in writing efficient code is the
choice of algorithm. A poorly optimized good algorithm will almost
always execute faster than a highly optimized poor algorithm. In
choosing an algorithm, it is also important to choose the right data
structures for its implementation. As a simple example, consider the
task of counting words. Any algorithm would involve a some sort of
table with word/number pairs. Such a table could be implemented using
a variety of data structures, e.g., as a pair of arrays or lists
representing the words and corresponding numbers, as an array of
structures, etc. But in this case, the associative array is ideally
suited to the task:
a = Assoc_Type[Int_Type, 0];
while (get_word (&word))
a[word]++;
Note the conciseness of the above code. It is important to appreciate
the fact that S-Lang is a byte-compiled interpreter that executes
statements much slower than that of a language that compiles to
machine code. The overhead of the processing of byte-codes by the
interpreter may be used to roughly justify the rule of thumb that the
smaller the code is, the faster it will run.
When possible, always take advantage of S-Lang's powerful array
facilities. For example, consider the act of clipping an array by
setting all values greater than 10 to 10. Rather than coding this as
n = length(a);
for (i = 0; i < n; i++)
if (a[i] > 10) a[i] = 10;
it should be written as
a[where(a>10)] = 10;
Finally, do not overlook the specialized modules that are available
for S-Lang.
21.2. Using the profiler
slprof is an executable slsh script that implements a standalone
profiler for slsh scripts. The script is essentially a front-end for a
set of interpreter hooks defined in a file called profile.sl, which
may be used by any application embedding S-Lang. The use of the
profiler will first be demonstrated in the context of slprof, and
after that follows a discussion of how to use profile.sl for other S-
Lang applications.
(To be completed...)
22. Regular Expressions
The S-Lang library includes a regular expression (RE) package that may
be used by an application embedding the library. The RE syntax should
be familiar to anyone acquainted with regular expressions. In this
section the syntax of the S-Lang regular expressions is discussed.
NOTE: At the moment, the S-Lang regular expressions do not support
UTF-8 encoded strings. The S-Lang library will most likely migrate to
the use of the PCRE regular expression library, deprecating the use of
the S-Lang REs in the process. For these reasons, the user is
encouraged to make use of the pcre module if possible.
22.1. S-Lang RE Syntax
A regular expression specifies a pattern to be matched against a
string, and has the property that the contcatenation of two REs is
also a RE.
The S-Lang library supports the following standard regular
expressions:
. match any character except newline
* matches zero or more occurrences of previous RE
+ matches one or more occurrences of previous RE
? matches zero or one occurrence of previous RE
^ matches beginning of a line
$ matches end of line
[ ... ] matches any single character between brackets.
For example, [-02468] matches `-' or any even digit.
and [-0-9a-z] matches `-' and any digit between 0 and 9
as well as letters a through z.
\< Match the beginning of a word.
\> Match the end of a word.
\( ... \)
\1, \2, ..., \9 Matches the match specified by nth \( ... \)
expression.
In addition the following extensions are also supported:
\c turn on case-sensitivity (default)
\C turn off case-sensitivity
\d match any digit
\e match ESC char
Here are some simple examples:
"^int " matches the "int " at the beginning of a line.
"\<money\>" matches "money" but only if it appears as a separate word.
"^$" matches an empty line.
A more complex pattern is
"\(\<[a-zA-Z]+\>\)[ ]+\1\>"
which matches any word repeated consecutively. Note how the grouping
operators \( and \) are used to define the text matched by the
enclosed regular expression, and then subsequently referred to \1.
Finally, remember that when used in string literals either in the S-
Lang language or in the C language, care must be taken to "double-up"
the '\' character since both languages treat it as an escape
character.
22.2. Differences between S-Lang and egrep REs
There are several differences between S-Lang regular expressions and,
e.g., egrep regular expressions.
The most notable difference is that the S-Lang regular expressions do
not support the OR operator | in expressions. This means that "a|b" or
"a\|b" do not have the meaning that they have in regular expression
packages that support egrep-style expressions.
The other main difference is that while S-Lang regular expressions
support the grouping operators \( and \), they are only used as a
means of specifying the text that is matched. That is, the expression
"@\([a-z]*\)@.*@\1@"
matches "xxx@abc@silly@abc@yyy", where the pattern \1 matches the text
enclosed by the \( and \) expressions. However, in the current imple-
mentation, the grouping operators are not used to group regular
expressions to form a single regular expression. Thus expression such
as "\(hello\)*" is not a pattern to match zero or more occurrences of
"hello" as it is in e.g., egrep.
One question that comes up from time to time is why doesn't S-Lang
simply employ some posix-compatible regular expression library. The
simple answer is that, at the time of this writing, none exists that
is available across all the platforms that the S-Lang library supports
(Unix, VMS, OS/2, win32, win16, BEOS, MSDOS, and QNX) and can be
distributed under both the GNU licenses. It is particularly important
that the library and the interpreter support a common set of regular
expressions in a platform independent manner.
A. S-Lang 2 Interpreter NEWS
This chapter describes features that were added to various 2.0
releases. For a much more complete and detailed list of changes, see
the changes.txt file that is distributed with the library.
A.1. What's new for S-Lang 2.2
o The ternary expression was added:
expression = condition ? val1 : val2
If condition is non-zero, then expression = val1, otherwise expression
= val2.
o The break and condition statements support an optional integer that
indicates how many loop levels the statement affects, e.g., the
break statement in
while (1)
{
loop (10)
{
break 2;
}
}
will cause both loops to be terminated.
o Multiline strings have been added:
"This is a \
multiline \
string"
`This is
another multiline
string that
does not require
a \ for continuation`
o List_Type objects may be indexed using an array of indices instead
of just a single scalar index.
The following intrinsic function were added in version 2.2:
sumsq
Equivalent to sum(x*x).
expm1
More accurate version of exp(x)-1 for x near 0.
log1p
More accurate version of log(1+x) for x near 0.
list_to_array
Creates an array from a list.
string_matches
A convenient alternative to the string_match and
string_match_nth functions.
_close
Close an integer descriptor.
_fileno
Returns the descriptor as an integer.
dup2_fd
Duplicates a file descriptor via the dup2 POSIX function.
getsid, killpg, getpriority, setpriority
These functions correspond to the corresponding POSIX functions.
ldexp, frexp
If x == a*2^b, where 0.5<=a<1.0 then (a,b)=frexp(x), and
x=ldexp(a,b).
The following functions have been enhanced:
hypot
If given a single array argument X, it returns the equivalent of
sqrt(sum(X*X).
polynom
The calling interface to this function was changed and support
added for arrays.
The following modules were added to version 2.2:
zlib
A module that wraps the popular z compression library.
fork
A module that wraps the fork, exec*, and waitpid functions.
sysconf
A module that implements interfaces to the POSIX sysconf,
pathconf, and confstr functions.
The following library files and functions were add to slsh:
process.sl
The code in this file utilizes the fork module to implement the
new_process function, which allows the caller to easily create
and communicate with subprocesses and pipelines.
A.2. What's new for S-Lang 2.1
o Short circuiting boolean operators || and && have been added to the
languange. The use of orelse and andelse constructs are nolonger
necessary nor encouraged.
o Qualifiers have been added to the language as a convenient and
powerful mechanism to pass optional information to functions.
o Structure definitions allow embeded assignemnts, e.g,
s = struct {foo = 3, bar = "hello" };
o Comparison expressions such as a<b<c are now interpretered as
(a<b)and(b<c).
o The ifnot keyword was added as an alternative to !if. The use of
!if has been deprecated.
o Looping constructs now support a "then" clause that will get
executed if the loop runs to completion, e.g.,
loop (20)
{
if (this ())
break; % The then clause will NOT get executed
}
then do_that ();
Note: then is now a reserved word.
o A floating point array of exactly N elements may be created using
the form [a:b:#N], where the elements are uniformly spaced and run
from a to b, inclusive.
o References to array elements and structure fields are now
supported, e.g., &A[3], &s.foo.
o An exception may be rethrown by calling "throw" without any
arguments:
try { something (); }
catch AnyError: { do_this (); throw; }
The following intrinsic function were added in version 2.1:
wherenot(x)
Equivalent to where (not(x))
_$(str)
Evaluates strings with embedded "dollar" variables, e.g.,
_$("$TERM").
__push_list/__pop_list
Push list items onto the stack
prod(x)
Computes the product of an array a[0]*a[1]*...
minabs(x), maxabs(x)
Equivalent to min(abs(x)) and max(abs(x)), resp.
getpgrp, setgid, getpgid
Get and set the process group ids (Unix).
setsid
Create a new session (Unix).
The following modules were added to version 2.1:
iconv
Performs character-set conversion using the iconv library.
onig
A regular expression module using oniguruma RE library.
The following library files and functions were add to slsh:
readascii
A flexible and power ascii (as opposed to binary) data file
reader.
cmdopt
A set of functions that vastly simplify the parsing of command
line options.
Also a history and completion mechanism was added to the S-Lang
readline interface, and as a result, slsh now supports history and
command/file completion.
A.3. What's new for S-Lang 2.0
Here is a brief list of some of the new features and improvements in
S-Lang 2.0.
o slsh, the generic S-Lang interpreter, now supports and interactive
command-line mode with readline support.
o Native support for Unicode via UTF-8 throughout the library.
o A List_Type object has been added to the language, e.g.,
x = {1, 2.7, "foo", [1:10]};
will create a (heterogeneous) list of 4 elements.
o A much improved exception handling model.
o Variable expansion within string literals:
file = "$HOME/src/slang-$VERSION/"$;
o Operator overloading for user-defined types. For example it is
possible to define a meaning to X+Y where X and Y are defined as
typedef struct { x, y, z } Vector;
define vector (x,y,z) { variable v = @Vector; v.x=x; v.y=y; v.z=z;}
X = vector (1,2,3);
Y = vector (4,5,6);
o Syntactic sugar for objected-oriented style method calls. S-Lang 1
code such as
(@s.method)(s, args);
may be written much more simply as
s.method(args);
This should make "object-oriented" code somewhat more readable. See
also the next section if your code uses constructs such as
@s.method(args);
because it is not supported by S-Lang 2.
o More intrinsic functions including math functions such as hypot,
atan2, floor, ceil, round, isnan, isinf, and many more.
o Support for long long integers.
X = 18446744073709551615ULL;
o Large file support
o Performance improvements. The S-Lang 2 interpreter is about 20
percent faster for many operations than the previous version.
o Better debugging support including an interactive debugger. See the
section on ``Using the sldb debugger'' for more information.
See the relevent chapters in in the manual for more information.
A.4. Upgrading to S-Lang 2
For the most part S-Lang 2 is backwards-compatible with S-Lang 1.
However there are a few important differences that need to be
understood before upgrading to version 2.
++ and -- operators in function calls
Previously the ++ and {--} operators were permitted in a
function argument list, e.g.,
some_function (x++, x);
Such uses are flagged as syntax errors and need to be changed to
x++; some_function (x);
Array indexing of strings
Array indexing of strings uses byte-semantics and not character-
semantics. This distinction is important only if UTF-8 mode is
in effect. If you use array indexing with functions that use
character semantics, then your code may not work properly in
UTF-8 mode. For example, one might have used
i = is_substr (a, b);
if (i) c = a[[0:i-2]];
to extract that portion of a that preceeds the occurrence of b in
a. This may nolonger work in UTF-8 mode where bytes and characters
are not generally the same. The correct way to write the above is
to use the substr function since it uses character semantics:
i = is_substr (a, b);
if (i) c = substr (a, 1, i-1);
Array indexing with negative integer ranges
Previously the interpretation of a range array was context
sensitive. In an indexing situation [0:-1] was used to index
from the first through the last element of an array, but outside
this context, [0:-1] was an empty array. For S-Lang 2, the
meaning of such arrays is always the same regardless of the
context. Since by itself [0:-1] represents an empty array,
indexing with such an array will also produce an empty array.
The behavior of scalar indices has not changed: A[-1] still
refers to the last element of the array.
Range arrays with an implied endpoint make sense only in
indexing situations. Hence the value of the endpoint can be
inferred from the context. Such arrays include [*], [:-1], etc.
Code that use index-ranges with negative valued indices such as
B = A[[0:-2]]; % Get all but the last element of A
will have to be changed to use an array with an implied endpoint:
B = A[[:-2]]; % Get all but the last element of A
Similarly, code such as
B = A[[-3:-1]]; % Get the last 3 elements of A
must be changed to
B = A[[-3:]];
Dereferencing function members of a structure
Support for the non-parenthesized form of function member
dereferencing has been dropped. Code such as
@s.foo(args);
will need to be changed to use the parenthesized form:
(@s.foo)(args);
The latter form will work in both S-Lang 1 and S-Lang 2.
If your code passes the structure as the first argument of the
method call, e.g.,
(@s.foo)(s, moreargs);
then it may be changed to
s.foo (moreargs);
However, this objected-oriented form of method calling is not sup-
ported by S-Lang 1.
ERROR_BLOCKS
Exception handling via ERROR_BLOCKS is still supported but
deprecated. If your code uses ERROR_BLOCKS it should be changed
to use the new exception handling model. For example, code that
looks like:
ERROR_BLOCK { cleanup_after_error (); }
do_something ();
.
.
should be changed to:
variable e;
try (e)
{
do_something ();
.
.
}
catch RunTimeError:
{
cleanup_after_error ();
throw e.error, e.message;
}
Code that makes use of EXECUTE_ERROR_BLOCK
ERROR_BLOCK { cleanup_after_error (); }
do_something ();
.
.
EXECUTE_ERROR_BLOCK;
should be changed to make use of a finally clause:
variable e;
try (e)
{
do_something ();
.
.
}
finally
{
cleanup_after_error ();
}
It is not possible to emulate the complete semantics of the
_clear_error function. However, those semantics are flawed and
fixing the problems associated with the use of _clear_error was one
of the primary reasons for the new exception handling model. The
main problem with the _clear_error method is that it causes
execution to resume at the byte-code following the code that
triggered the error. As such, _clear_error defines no absolute
resumption point. In contrast, the try-catch exception model has
well-defined points of execution. With the above caveats, code such
as
ERROR_BLOCK { cleanup_after_error (); _clear_error ();}
do_something ();
.
.
should be changed to:
variable e;
try (e)
{
do_something ();
.
.
}
catch RunTimeError:
{
cleanup_after_error ();
}
And code using _clear_error in conjunction with EXE-
CUTE_ERROR_BLOCK:
ERROR_BLOCK { cleanup_after_error (); _clear_error ();}
do_something ();
.
.
EXECUTE_ERROR_BLOCK;
should be changed to:
variable e;
try (e)
{
do_something ();
.
.
}
catch RunTimeError:
{
cleanup_after_error ();
}
finally:
{
cleanup_after_error ();
}
fread
When reading Char_Type and UChar_Type objects the S-Lang 1
version of fread returned a binary string (BString_Type if the
number of characters read was greater than one, or a U/Char_Type
if the number read was one. In other words, the resulting type
depended upon how many bytes were read with no way to predict
the resulting type in advance. In contrast, when reading, e.g,
Int_Type objects, fread returned an Int_Type when it read one
integer, or an array of Int_Type if more than one was read. For
S-Lang 2, the behavior of fread with respect to UChar_Type and
Char_Type types was changed to have the same semantics as the
other data types.
The upshot is that code that used
nread = fread (&str, Char_Type, num_wanted, fp)
will no longer result in str being a BString_Type if nread > 1.
Instead, str will now become a Char_Type[nread] object. In order to
read a specified number of bytes from a file in the form of a
string, use the fread_bytes function:
#if (_slang_version >= 20000)
nread = fread_bytes (&str, num_wanted, fp);
#else
nread = fread (&str, Char_Type, num_wanted, fp)
#endif
The above will work with both versions of the interpreter.
strtrans
The strtrans function has been changed to support Unicode. One
ramification of this is that when mapping from one range of
characters to another, the length of the ranges must now be
equal.
str_delete_chars
This function was changed to support unicode character classes.
Code such as
y = str_delete_chars (x, "\\a");
is now implies the deletion of all alphabetic characters from x.
Previously it meant to delete the backslashes and as from from x.
Use
y = str_delete_chars (x, "\\\\a");
to achieve the latter.
substr, is_substr, strsub
These functions use character-semantics and not byte-semantics.
The distinction is important in UTF-8 mode. If you use array
indexing in conjunction with these functions, then read on.
B. Copyright
The S-Lang library is distributed under the terms of the GNU General
Public License.
B.1. The GNU Public License
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom
to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License is
intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free soft-
ware--to make sure the software is free for all its users. This Gen-
eral Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation's
software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it.
(Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU
Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it to your pro-
grams, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not
price. Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you
have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it
if you want it, that you can change the software or use pieces of it
in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid
anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.
These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if
you distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether
gratis or for a fee, you must give the recipients all the rights that
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We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and
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Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain
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Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
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The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and
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GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
0. This License applies to any program or other work which contains a
notice placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributed
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END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS
How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest
possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it
free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these
terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to
attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively
convey the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least
the "copyright" line and a pointer to where the full notice is found.
<one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.>
Copyright (C) 19yy <name of author>
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper
mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like this
when it starts in an interactive mode:
Gnomovision version 69, Copyright (C) 19yy name of author
Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'.
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.
The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appro-
priate parts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands
you use may be called something other than `show w' and `show c'; they
could even be mouse-clicks or menu items--whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or
your school, if any, to sign a "copyright disclaimer" for the program,
if necessary. Here is a sample; alter the names:
Yoyodyne, Inc., hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program
`Gnomovision' (which makes passes at compilers) written by James Hacker.
<signature of Ty Coon>, 1 April 1989
Ty Coon, President of Vice
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program
into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library,
you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applica-
tions with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU
Library General Public License instead of this License.
B.2. The Unicode Inc. Copyright
This software makes use of the Unicode tables published by Unicode,
Inc under the following terms:
COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSION NOTICE
Copyright (c) 1991-2009 Unicode, Inc. All rights reserved. Distributed
under the Terms of Use in http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of the Unicode data files and any associated
documentation (the "Data Files") or Unicode software and any
associated documentation (the "Software") to deal in the Data Files
or Software without restriction, including without limitation the
rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, and/or sell
copies of the Data Files or Software, and to permit persons to whom
the Data Files or Software are furnished to do so, provided that (a)
the above copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear with
all copies of the Data Files or Software, (b) both the above
copyright notice(s) and this permission notice appear in associated
documentation, and (c) there is clear notice in each modified Data
File or in the Software as well as in the documentation associated
with the Data File(s) or Software that the data or software has been
modified.
THE DATA FILES AND SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY
OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT OF THIRD PARTY RIGHTS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR HOLDERS INCLUDED IN THIS NOTICE BE LIABLE FOR
ANY CLAIM, OR ANY SPECIAL INDIRECT OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, OR ANY
DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS
ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE
OF THE DATA FILES OR SOFTWARE.
Except as contained in this notice, the name of a copyright holder
shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale,
use or other dealings in these Data Files or Software without prior
written authorization of the copyright holder.