What happens to second println statement? (Clojure repl) - clojure

When I call this small function in the clojure REPL it only prints the first hello world, not hello mars. Why is that? It's not lazy (as far as I understand) otherwise the exception wouldn't get hit, in addition SO tells me println causes a flush.
(defn foo
"I don't do a whole lot."
[x]
(println x "Hello, World!")
(map (fn [x] (let [_ (println "Hello, Mars")
__ (throw (Exception. "talking to many planets"))]
{ :aliens? false }
)) [1 2 3])
)
Output:
(foo nil) nil Hello, World!
Exception talking to many planets test.repl/foo/fn--6580
(form-init13300486174634970.clj:5)

First of all, map is actually lazy, so foo returns a LazySeq, which is then forced when the REPL prints it. Now when I run your example using bare Clojure (java -jar clojure.jar), I get the following output:
user=> (foo nil)
nil Hello, World!
(Hello, Mars
Exception talking to many planets user/foo/fn--1 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:5)
user=>
I get the same result with both Clojure 1.4.0 and 1.5.1.
Now if I run via lein repl, I get the output you describe. So it appears that something in the nrepl chain is affecting how things are printed. This makes sense since nrepl is designed to communicate with clients over the network. There appears to be a slight bug, however, in its handling of this case. Or perhaps it re-binds flush-on-newline to false when printing the value? Sorry, I haven't dived into the code deep enough to give a more definite answer.
Incidentally, if you wrap the function call in a println, i.e. (println (foo nil)), then you get the expected output shown above.

Okay I have an idea. Map returns a lazy seq. The repl calls println (or similar) on the map which attempts to realize it, calling .toString() (or similar). Internally when print/ln is called within a print/ln it saves the output until its finishes it own, thus an exception will mean the other bits collected (print within a print) call aren't flushed.

Related

How can I get readline/rlwrap-like functionality when using clojure.main/repl?

How can I get readline-like (or rlwrap-like) functionality from my REPL when I use the repl function from clojure.main?
The background to this is that I'm utilizing and customizing the break function from The Joy of Clojure, First Edition. I'm using it from inside the lein repl REPL. When my "breakpoint" kicks in, the readline-like functionality of Leiningen's REPL is gone, which is kind of inconvenient. My muscle memory makes me hit ↑ followed quickly by Enter. Before I can stop myself, I've got this in my terminal:
debug=> ^[[A
CompilerException java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to resolve symbol: in this context, compiling:(/tmp/form-init13211381000659590518.clj:1:1)
And now my REPL is stuck and I have to kill the terminal or the process to get out. I'd like very much if I could either get readline working in this second-level REPL or at least prevent this common issue from derailing my debug sessions.
You should use rebel readline, a new repl for clojure developed by bhauman the same guy who brought is figwheel.
https://github.com/bhauman/rebel-readline
It has rlwrap features, syntax highlighting and multi line code editing all in the terminal.
I'm not sure the rlwrap utility would help there, because the inner REPL is held by the outer one. So the input is being controlled by Java code, not the rlwrap tool.
You are causing an exception since you input a wrong value. I remember, the clojure.main/repl function might take an additional argument to handle exceptions. Probably, you could handle it somehow and just print a string "wrong input value" instead. Take a look at the documentation for REPL.
Also, you may implement your own REPL for debugging. Long ago, I used to write some kind of it, here what I've got:
(defn repl []
(let [input (read)]
(if (= input 'q)
nil
(do
(try
(let [result (eval input)]
(println result))
(catch Exception e
(println e)))
(recur)))))
That function just prompts for a proper Clojure expression in an endless loop, evaluates it and prints the result. In case of a wrong input, it prints the error and carries on. To leave the REPL, input q.
Example:
(repl)
(+ 1 2) ;; 2
fsdf8 9_fsd ;; prints a stack trace
q ;; returns nil and exit
Try Emacs with Cider as your repl. When you (break) you'll be bumped out of the Cider repl and into the Emacs Minibuffer, where your standard emacs editing shortcuts (upon which readline is modeled) continue to apply.

Clojure: *out* vs System/out

I'm trying to translate a small console program I wrote in Java into Clojure, but I'm having a little trouble figuring out the difference between Clojure's standard *out* var and the object at System/out. I was under the impression that they were the same thing, but when during my testing they seem to be different.
In my program I prompt the user to enter a number, and I want the prompt and input text to be on the same line. In Java, I printed the prompt with System.out.print() and then a Scanner read the input.
The following was my first attempt at something similar in Clojure. Though the print function seems like it should fire before the read-line, it immediately blocks on input and prints everything after in a jumbled mess:
(defn inp1 []
(print "Enter your input: ")
(let [in (read-line)]
(println "Your input is: " in)))
The following was my next attempt, using *out*. It suffers from the same problem as the function above:
(defn inp2 []
(.print *out* "Enter input: ")
(let [i (read-line)]
(println "You entered: " i)))
On my third try, I finally got it to work by using System/out directly:
(defn inp3 []
(let [o System/out]
(.print o "Enter input: ")
(let [i (read-line)]
(println "You entered: " i))))
I'm glad I finally got it to work, but I'm deeply confused as to why the third one works the way I want when the first two don't. Why do the first two block immediately? Can anyone shed some light on this?
Per the docs:
*out* - A java.io.Writer object representing standard output for print operations.
Defaults to System/out, wrapped in an OutputStreamWriter
...so, you have a layer of wrapping. Looking at the docs for that layer (emphasis added):
Each invocation of a write() method causes the encoding converter to be invoked on the given character(s). The resulting bytes are accumulated in a buffer before being written to the underlying output stream. The size of this buffer may be specified, but by default it is large enough for most purposes. Note that the characters passed to the write() methods are not buffered.
...emphasis added. Since OutputStreamWriter buffers, you need to call .flush to force content to be written.

rand-nth always yields the same result after compilation

I've project created via Leiningen with core.clj:
(ns cotd.core
(:gen-class)
(:use [clojure.repl :only (doc)]))
(defmacro eval-doc
[form]
(let [resulting-symbol (eval form)]
`(doc ~resulting-symbol)))
(defn- random-function-name []
(rand-nth (keys (ns-publics 'clojure.core))))
(defn -main
"Display random doc page"
[& args]
(eval-doc (random-function-name)))
And after compiling and running it always yields the same result:
$ java -jar cotd.jar
-------------------------
clojure.core/unchecked-negate
([x])
Returns the negation of x, a long.
Note - uses a primitive operator subject to overflow.
$ java -jar cotd.jar
-------------------------
clojure.core/unchecked-negate
([x])
Returns the negation of x, a long.
Note - uses a primitive operator subject to overflow.
But with two consecutive calls:
(do
(eval-doc (random-function-name))
(eval-doc (random-function-name))))
It yields two different results in single "call".
What I've tried is googling, reading, etc. but I have no clues what's going on...
How to invoke this rand-nth dynamically?
The problem wasn't with rand-nth but because the resulting-symbol in the let statement is produced during the compilation phase. #beyamor provided answer here: Unable to get random (doc) from a namespace

Clojure (read-line) doesn't wait for input

I am writing a text game in Clojure. I want the player to type lines at the console, and the game to respond on a line-by-line basis.
Research showed me that (read-line) is the way one is meant to get text lines from standard input in Clojure, but it is not working for me.
I am in a fresh Leiningen project, and I have added a :main clause to the project.clj pointing to the only source file:
(ns textgame.core)
(defn -main [& args]
(println "Entering -main")
; (flush) ;makes no difference if flush are commented out
(let [input (read-line)]
(println "ECHO:" input))
; (flush)
(println "Exiting -main"))
using lein run yields:
Entering -main
ECHO: nil
Exiting -main
In other words, there is no opportunity to enter text at the console for (read-line) to read.
How should I get Clojure to wait for characters and newline to be entered and return the corresponding string?
(I am using GNOME Terminal 2.32.1 on Linux Mint 11, Leiningen 1.6.1.1 on Java 1.6.0_26 Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM, Clojure version 1.2.1.)
Update: If I run lein repl, I can (println (read-line)), but not when I have a -main function and run using lein run.
Try "lein trampoline run". See http://groups.google.com/group/leiningen/browse_thread/thread/a07a7f10edb77c9b for more details also from https://github.com/technomancy/leiningen:
Q: I don't have access to stdin inside my project.
A: There's a problem in the library that Leiningen uses to spawn new processes that blocks access to console input. This means that functions like read-line will not work as expected in most contexts, though the repl task necessarily includes a workaround. You can also use the trampoline task to launch your project's JVM after Leiningen's has exited rather than launching it as a subprocess.
I have had similar problems and resorted to building a jar file and then running that.
lein uberjar
java -jar project-standalone.jar
It's a bit slower, though it got me unstuck. An answer that works from the repl would
be better
Wrap your read-line calls with the macro with-read-line-support which is now in ns swank.core [since swank-clojure 1.4+ I believe]:
(use 'swank.core)
(with-read-line-support
(println "a line from Emacs:" (read-line)))
Thanks to Tavis Judd for the fix.
You can use read and use a string as input.
Not sure about the lein aspects of the problem, but definitely in emacs it is impossible to make stdin work. However, if you want to get text from the user, you can easily do it using a JOptionPane like this code from my little tic-tac-toe program:
(defn get-input []
(let [input (JOptionPane/showInputDialog "Enter your next move (row/column)")]
(map #(Integer/valueOf %) (.split input "/"))))

How can I capture the standard output of clojure?

I have some printlns I need to capture from a Clojure program and I was wondering how I could capture the output?
I have tried:
(binding [a *out*]
(println "h")
a
)
: but this doesn't work
(with-out-str (println "this should return as a string"))
Just to expand a little on Michiel's answer, when you want to capture output to a file you can combine with-out-str with spit.
When you don't want to build up a huge string in memory before writing it out then you can use with-out-writer from the clojure.contrib.io library.
with-out-writer is a macro that nicely encapsulates the correct opening and closing of the file resource and the binding of a writer on that file to *out* while executing the code in its body.
Michiel's exactly right. Since I can't add code in a comment on his answer, here's what with-out-str does under the covers, so you can compare it with your attempt:
user=> (macroexpand-1 '(with-out-str (println "output")))
(clojure.core/let [s__4091__auto__ (new java.io.StringWriter)]
(clojure.core/binding [clojure.core/*out* s__4091__auto__]
(println "output")
(clojure.core/str s__4091__auto__)))
Your code was binding the existing standard output stream to a variable, printing to that stream, and then asking the stream for its value via the variable; however, the value of the stream was of course not the bytes that had been printed to it. So with-out-str binds a newly created StringWriter to *out* temporarily, and finally queries the string value of that temporary writer.