I was wondering what is going on in the snippet below. Why isn't the function properly redefined without forcing the evaluation of the sequence?
user> (defn foo [] (map vector (range 3)))
#'user/foo
user> (defn bar [] (map #(vector %) (range 3)))
#'user/bar
user> (foo)
([0] [1] [2])
user> (bar)
([0] [1] [2])
user> (with-redefs [vector (fn [_] "what does the fox say?")] (foo))
("what does the fox say?" "what does the fox say?" "what does the fox say?")
user> (with-redefs [vector (fn [_] "what does the fox say?")] (bar))
([0] [1] [2])
user> (with-redefs [vector (fn [_] "what does the fox say?")] (vec (bar)))
["what does the fox say?" "what does the fox say?" "what does the fox say?"]
user>
Thanks!
The difference is that when you call foo, vector, as an argument to map, is evaluated (which in this case means resolving it to a function object) once and doesn't need to be resolved again. That same function object is used even after your code has exited with-redefs.
In bar, however, it isn't vector that's an argument to map, but instead an anonymous function which references vector by name. The result is that while the anonymous function is only evaluated once, vector will be resolved every time the anonymous function is invoked. Because map is lazy, that's happening after the code has already exited with-redefs (except for when your force evaluation).
The key point is that in a function call - like (map vector (range 3)) - each of argument is evaluated and the calling function gets the result of those evaluations. That means the map call in foo gets the redefined vector, whereas the map call in bar gets a function which will still need to look up vector by name when it's invoked.
The Clojure.org page on evaluation provides some details on how symbols are resolved to objects. This is also an example of late binding.
Related
Given that :post takes a form that gets evaluated later (e.g. {:post [(= 10 %)]}). How could one dynamically pass a 'pre-made' vector of functions to :post?
For example:
(def my-post-validator
[prediate1 predicate2 predicate3])
(defn foo [x]
{:post my-post-validator}
x)
this throws a syntax error
Don't know how to create ISeq from: clojure.lang.Symbol
With my fuzzy understanding, it's because defn is a macro, and the thing that allows the % syntax in :post is that it's quoted internally..?
I thought maybe I then use a macro to pass a 'literal' of what I wanted evaluated
(defmacro my-post-cond [spec]
'[(assert spec %) (predicate2 %) (predicate n)])
example:
(defn foo [x]
{:post (my-post-cond :what/ever)}
x)
However, this attempt gives the error:
Can't take value of a macro
Is there a way to pass a vector of things to :post rather than having to define it inline?
You can't pass a vector of predefined predicates, but you can combine multiple predicates under a single name and use that name in :post:
(defn my-post-cond [spec val]
(and
;; Not sure if this is exactly what you want,
;; given that `val` becomes an assert message.
(assert spec val)
(predicate2 val)
;; You used `n` - I assume it was supposed to be `%`.
(predicate val)))
(defn foo [x]
{:post [(my-post-cond :what/ever %)]}
x)
I started off as a fan of pre- and post-conditions, but I've changed over the years.
For simple things, I prefer to use Plumatic Schema to not only test inputs & outputs, but to document them as well.
For more complicated tests & verifications, I just put in an explicit assert or similar. I also wrote a helper function in the Tupelo library to reduce repetition, etc when debugging or verifying return values:
(ns tst.demo.core
(:use tupelo.core tupelo.test))
(defn oddly
"Transforms its input. Throws if result is not odd"
[x]
(let [answer (-> x (* 3) (+ 2))]
(with-result answer
(newline)
(println :given x)
(assert (odd? answer))
(println :returning answer))))
(dotest
(is= 5 (oddly 1))
(throws? (oddly 2)))
with result
------------------------------------
Clojure 1.10.3 Java 11.0.11
------------------------------------
Testing tst.demo.core
:given 1
:returning 5
:given 2
Ran 2 tests containing 2 assertions.
0 failures, 0 errors.
Passed all tests
So with either the println or assert, the returned value is easy to see. If it fails the assert, an Exception is thrown as normal.
I was practicing one Clojure tutorial and had to ensure that a for loop was executed so I put a println command there, but it did not display messages.
So now I have got the question...
This code prints Tom's name:
(ns tutorial.core)
(defn -main []
(println 'Jane)
(for [a ['Tom]]
(println a))
;; 'Kate
)
tutorial.core> (-main)
Jane
Tom
(nil)
tutorial.core>
but this not:
(ns tutorial.core)
(defn -main []
(println 'Jane)
(for [a ['Tom]]
(println a))
'Kate
)
tutorial.core> (-main)
Jane
Kate
tutorial.core>
Why? In which cases can we expect that println will not print texts?
for is not a loop, it is a sequence comprehension which returns a lazy sequence. Your for expression will therefore only execute its side-effects (calls to println) when the returned sequence is evaluated. The REPL evaluates the values returned from your calls to -main so it can print them.
Your first example returns a lazy sequence which is evaluted by the REPL causing the (println 'Tom) call to be evaluated. Since println returns nil, the resulting sequence contains a single nil value - this is the (nil) you see in the output.
Your second example creates the same sequence but does not evaluate it, instead 'Kate is returned from the function and the REPL prints that.
If you want an imperative for loop you should use doseq:
(defn -main []
(println 'Jane)
(doseq [a ['Tom]]
(println a))
'Kate)
As Lee says, if you only want side effects like printing, a doseq is the best solution as it never returns a value other than nil.
If you do want to use a for loop, you can remove the laziness by wrapping it inside a (vec ...) expression, which will force the for loop to run immediately. Thus we get:
(println :start)
(vec
(for [a [1 2 3]]
(println a)))
(println :end)
with result:
:start
1
2
3
:end
Without the vec, we get the behavior you saw:
(println :start)
(for [a [1 2 3]]
(println a))
(println :end)
with result:
:start
:end
I almost never want a lazy result, as the uncertainty over when a computation occurs can make debugging difficult. I use the above construct so often that I wrote a small macro forv that always returns a vector result, similar to the mapv function.
I wrote a specialized function construct, which under the hood is really just a Clojure function. So basically I have a function that makes (similar to fn) and a function that calls my specialized functions (similar to CL's funcall).
My constructor assigns metadata (at compile-time) so I could distinguish between "my" functions and other/normal Clojure functions.
What I want to do is to make a macro that lets users write code as if my functions were normal functions. It would do so by walking over the code, and in functions calls, when the callee is a specialized function, it would change the call so it would use my caller (and also inject some extra information). For example:
(defmacro my-fn [args-vector & body] ...)
(defmacro my-funcall [myfn & args] ...)
(defmacro with-my-fns [& body] ...)
(with-my-fns
123
(first [1 2 3])
((my-fn [x y] (+ x y))) 10 20)
; should yield:
(do
123
(first [1 2 3])
(my-funcall (my-fn [x y] (+ x y)) 10 20))
I run into problems in lexical environments. For example:
(with-my-fns
(let [myf (my-fn [x y] (+ x y))]
(myf))
In this case, when the macro I want to write (i.e. with-my-fns) encounters (myf), it sees myf as a symbol, and I don't have access to the metadata. It's also not a Var so I can't resolve it.
I care to know because otherwise I'll have to put checks on almost every single function call at runtime. Note that I don't really care if my metadata on the values are actual Clojure metadata; if it's possible with the type-system and whatnot it's just as good.
P.S. I initially wanted to just ask about lexical environments, but maybe there are more pitfalls I should be aware of where my approach would fail? (or maybe even the above is actually an XY problem? I'd welcome suggestions).
As #OlegTheCat already pointed out in the comment section, the idea to use meta-data does not work.
However I might have a solution you can live with:
(ns cl-myfn.core)
(defprotocol MyCallable
(call [this magic args]))
(extend-protocol MyCallable
;; a clojure function implements IFn
;; we use this knowledge to simply call it
;; and ignore the magic
clojure.lang.IFn
(call [this _magic args]
(apply this args)))
(deftype MyFun [myFun]
MyCallable
;; this is our magic type
;; for now it only adds the magic as first argument
;; you may add all the checks here
(call [this magic args]
(apply (.myFun this) magic args)))
;;turn this into a macro if you want more syntactic sugar
(defn make-myfun [fun]
(MyFun. fun))
(defmacro with-myfuns [magic & funs]
`(do ~#(map (fn [f#]
;; if f# is a sequence it is treated as a function call
(if (seq? f#)
(let [[fun# & args#] f#]
`(call ~fun# ~magic [~#args#]))
;; if f# is nonsequential it is left alone
f#))
funs)))
(let [my-prn (make-myfun prn)]
(with-myfuns :a-kind-of-magic
123
[1 2 3]
(prn :hello)
(my-prn 123)))
;; for your convenience: the macro-expansion
(let [my-prn (make-myfun prn)]
(prn (macroexpand-1 '(with-myfuns :a-kind-of-magic
123
[1 2 3]
(prn :hello)
(my-prn 123)))))
the output:
:hello
:a-kind-of-magic 123
(do 123 [1 2 3] (cl-myfn.core/call prn :a-kind-of-magic [:hello]) (cl-myfn.core/call my-prn :a-kind-of-magic [123]))
Given a list of names for variables, I want to set those variables to an expression.
I tried this:
(doall (for [x ["a" "b" "c"]] (def (symbol x) 666)))
...but this yields the error
java.lang.Exception: First argument to def must be a Symbol
Can anyone show me the right way to accomplish this, please?
Clojure's "intern" function is for this purpose:
(doseq [x ["a" "b" "c"]]
(intern *ns* (symbol x) 666))
(doall (for [x ["a" "b" "c"]] (eval `(def ~(symbol x) 666))))
In response to your comment:
There are no macros involved here. eval is a function that takes a list and returns the result of executing that list as code. ` and ~ are shortcuts to create a partially-quoted list.
` means the contents of the following lists shall be quoted unless preceded by a ~
~ the following list is a function call that shall be executed, not quoted.
So ``(def ~(symbol x) 666)is the list containing the symboldef, followed by the result of executingsymbol xfollowed by the number of the beast. I could as well have written(eval (list 'def (symbol x) 666))` to achieve the same effect.
Updated to take Stuart Sierra's comment (mentioning clojure.core/intern) into account.
Using eval here is fine, but it may be interesting to know that it is not necessary, regardless of whether the Vars are known to exist already. In fact, if they are known to exist, then I think the alter-var-root solution below is cleaner; if they might not exist, then I wouldn't insist on my alternative proposition being much cleaner, but it seems to make for the shortest code (if we disregard the overhead of three lines for a function definition), so I'll just post it for your consideration.
If the Var is known to exist:
(alter-var-root (resolve (symbol "foo")) (constantly new-value))
So you could do
(dorun
(map #(-> %1 symbol resolve (alter-var-root %2))
["x" "y" "z"]
[value-for-x value-for-y value-for z]))
(If the same value was to be used for all Vars, you could use (repeat value) for the final argument to map or just put it in the anonymous function.)
If the Vars might need to be created, then you can actually write a function to do this (once again, I wouldn't necessarily claim this to be cleaner than eval, but anyway -- just for the interest of it):
(defn create-var
;; I used clojure.lang.Var/intern in the original answer,
;; but as Stuart Sierra has pointed out in a comment,
;; a Clojure built-in is available to accomplish the same
;; thing
([sym] (intern *ns* sym))
([sym val] (intern *ns* sym val)))
Note that if a Var turns out to have already been interned with the given name in the given namespace, then this changes nothing in the single argument case or just resets the Var to the given new value in the two argument case. With this, you can solve the original problem like so:
(dorun (map #(create-var (symbol %) 666) ["x" "y" "z"]))
Some additional examples:
user> (create-var 'bar (fn [_] :bar))
#'user/bar
user> (bar :foo)
:bar
user> (create-var 'baz)
#'user/baz
user> baz
; Evaluation aborted. ; java.lang.IllegalStateException:
; Var user/baz is unbound.
; It does exist, though!
;; if you really wanted to do things like this, you'd
;; actually use the clojure.contrib.with-ns/with-ns macro
user> (binding [*ns* (the-ns 'quux)]
(create-var 'foobar 5))
#'quux/foobar
user> quux/foobar
5
Evaluation rules for normal function calls are to evaluate all the items of the list, and call the first item in the list as a function with the rest of the items in the list as parameters.
But you can't make any assumptions about the evaluation rules for special forms or macros. A special form or the code produced by a macro call could evaluate all the arguments, or never evaluate them, or evaluate them multiple times, or evaluate some arguments and not others. def is a special form, and it doesn't evaluate its first argument. If it did, it couldn't work. Evaluating the foo in (def foo 123) would result in a "no such var 'foo'" error most of the time (if foo was already defined, you probably wouldn't be defining it yourself).
I'm not sure what you're using this for, but it doesn't seem very idiomatic. Using def anywhere but at the toplevel of your program usually means you're doing something wrong.
(Note: doall + for = doseq.)
I have a sequence (foundApps) returned from a function and I want to map a function to all it's elements. For some reason, apply and count work for the sequnece but map doesn't:
(apply println foundApps)
(map println rest foundApps)
(map (fn [app] (println app)) foundApps)
(println (str "Found " (count foundApps) " apps to delete"))))
Prints:
{:description another descr, :title apptwo, :owner jim, :appstoreid 1235, :kind App, :key #<Key App(2)>} {:description another descr, :title apptwo, :owner jim, :appstoreid 1235, :kind App, :key #<Key App(4)>}
Found 2 apps to delete for id 1235
So apply seems to happily work for the sequence, but map doesn't. Where am I being stupid?
I have a simple explanation which this post is lacking. Let's imagine an abstract function F and a vector. So,
(apply F [1 2 3 4 5])
translates to
(F 1 2 3 4 5)
which means that F has to be at best case variadic.
While
(map F [1 2 3 4 5])
translates to
[(F 1) (F 2) (F 3) (F 4) (F 5)]
which means that F has to be single-variable, or at least behave this way.
There are some nuances about types, since map actually returns a lazy sequence instead of vector. But for the sake of simplicity, I hope it's pardonable.
Most likely you're being hit by map's laziness. (map produces a lazy sequence which is only realised when some code actually uses its elements. And even then the realisation happens in chunks, so that you have to walk the whole sequence to make sure it all got realised.) Try wrapping the map expression in a dorun:
(dorun (map println foundApps))
Also, since you're doing it just for the side effects, it might be cleaner to use doseq instead:
(doseq [fa foundApps]
(println fa))
Note that (map println foundApps) should work just fine at the REPL; I'm assuming you've extracted it from somewhere in your code where it's not being forced. There's no such difference with doseq which is strict (i.e. not lazy) and will walk its argument sequences for you under any circumstances. Also note that doseq returns nil as its value; it's only good for side-effects. Finally I've skipped the rest from your code; you might have meant (rest foundApps) (unless it's just a typo).
Also note that (apply println foundApps) will print all the foundApps on one line, whereas (dorun (map println foundApps)) will print each member of foundApps on its own line.
A little explanation might help. In general you use apply to splat a sequence of elements into a set of arguments to a function. So applying a function to some arguments just means passing them in as arguments to the function, in a single function call.
The map function will do what you want, create a new seq by plugging each element of the input into a function and then storing the output. It does it lazily though, so the values will only be computed when you actually iterate over the list. To force this you can use the (doall my-seq) function, but most of the time you won't need to do that.
If you need to perform an operation immediately because it has side effects, like printing or saving to a database or something, then you typically use doseq.
So to append "foo" to all of your apps (assuming they are strings):
(map (fn [app] (str app "foo")) found-apps)
or using the shorhand for an anonymous function:
(map #(str % "foo") found-apps)
Doing the same but printing immediately can be done with either of these:
(doall (map #(println %) found-apps))
(doseq [app found-apps] (println app))