In the Clojure Koans :fin is being used in atoms.clj. Here is one example:
(def atomic-clock (atom 0))
"Atomic atoms are atomic"
(= 20 (do
(compare-and-set! atomic-clock 100 :fin)
#atomic-clock))
I understand that :fin is the new value. But why is it being used instead of number?
I've searched the documentation for :fin being used and cannot find its use other than in the Koans.
Thanks.
In Clojure, the colon makes something called a keyword, or a key:
user=> (type :xyz)
clojure.lang.Keyword
Keys are used in maps, because they're easy to check for equality and to convert to strings. You can see that, later in the same file, :fin is used again in a check for equality:
(= :fin (do
(compare-and-set! __ __ __)
#atomic-clock)))
Related
I want to be able to call map on regular expressions, like so:
(map #"ab+c*" ["abbb" "ac" "abbcc"])
=> ("abbb" "abbcc")
How do I extend regular expressions to support the IFn interface? Or is there a different way to do it?
ClojureScript:
(extend-type js/RegExp
IFn
(-invoke
([match s] (re-find match s))
([match replacement s]
(clojure.string/replace s match replacement))))
Now you can call regular expressions as functions and even pass them to map:
(#"abc+" "abcccc")
=> "abcccc"
(map #"abc+" ["abcccc" "abcccccccc"])
=> ("abcccc" "abcccccccc")
Unfortunately, IFn is not a protocol in Clojure, so you cannot extend it. That's unfortunate.
Since IFn isn't a protocol in core Clojure, I don't believe that this is possible.
The closest I could get is creating a wrapper type that implements IFn:
(defrecord R [^java.util.regex.Pattern regex]
clojure.lang.IFn
(invoke [this s]
(re-find regex s))
(invoke [this replacement s]
(clojure.string/replace s regex replacement)))
(map (->R #"abc+") ["abcccc" "abcccccccc"])
=> ("abcccc" "abcccccccc")
The trouble with trying to do this is that it's not directly obvious what you're trying to do with the regular expression - Particularly when most of your production code will look like (map #"ab+" entries)
Regular expressions are about a pattern matching only, they don't directly imply what transformation you want from them, so you really should steer clear of trying to shoehorn that into it.
If it's a once-off, just use
(map #(clojure.string/replace % #"ab+c*" "ab") ["ab" "ac" "abbcc"])
=> ("ab" "ac" "ab")
(It's not immediately obvious how your example is supposed to work? You have less elements in your result - are you filtering and transforming? How are you getting to the "abbb" element?)
If you're using this a lot, I would recommend simply creating a helper function in a common namespace that you can use with map instead of trying to extend the IFn interface.. Since creating a function is, in effect, a direct way to extend from IFn, but it's a named function with very specific semantics that you can customize precisely.
As CmdrDats says, using re-find in an anonymous function is definitely the way to go:
(filter #(re-find #"ab+c*" %) ["abbb" "ac" "abbcc"])
=> ("abbb" "abbcc")
I sometimes use a helper function to emphasize that I want just true/false output (not the match nor a sequence of matches), and since I'm always forgetting the differences between the re-xxx functions:
(ns demo.core
(:require [schema.core :as s]))
(s/defn contains-match? :- s/Bool
"Returns true if the regex matches any portion of the intput string."
[search-str :- s/Str
re :- s/Any]
#?(:clj (assert (instance? java.util.regex.Pattern re)))
(boolean (re-find re search-str)))
After a while of working with Clojure, I have accumulated some knowledge on its laziness. I know whether a frequently-used API such as map is lazy. However, I still feel dubious when I start using an unfamiliar API such as with-open.
Is there any document that shows a complete list of lazy APIs of Clojure's core module?
You can find functions that return lazy sequences by opening up the Clojure code https://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/master/src/clj/clojure/core.clj
and searching for "Returns a lazy"
I am not aware of any curated lists of them.
The rule of thumb is: if it returns a sequence, it will be a lazy sequence, if it returns a value, it will force evaluation.
When using a new function, macro or special form, read the docstring. Most development environments have a key to show the docstring, or at least navigate to the source (where you can see the docstring), and there is always http://clojure.org/api/api.
In the case of with-open:
with-open
macro
Usage: (with-open bindings & body)
bindings => [name init ...]
Evaluates body in a try expression with names bound to the values
of the inits, and a finally clause that calls (.close name) on each
name in reverse order.
We can see that the result of calling with-open is evaluation of the expression with a final close. So we know that there is nothing lazy about it. However that doesn't mean you don't need to think about laziness inside with-open, quite the opposite!
(with-open [r (io/reader "myfile")]
(line-seq r))
This is a common trap. line-seq returns a lazy sequence! The problem here is that the lazy sequence will be realized after the file is closed, because the file is closed when exiting the scope of with-open. So you need to fully process the lazy sequence before exiting the with-open scope.
My advice is to avoid trying to think about your program as having 'lazy bits' and 'immediate bits', but instead just be mindful that when io or side-effects are involved you need to take care of when things happen as well as what should happen.
digging on a Timothy Pratley's proposal to search in doc:
let's make it fun!
your repl has everything that you need to find out a list of lazy functions.
first of all, there is a clojure.repl/doc macro, which prints documentation to out in repl
user> (doc +)
-------------------------
clojure.core/+
([] [x] [x y] [x y & more])
Returns the sum of nums. (+) returns 0. Does not auto-promote
longs, will throw on overflow. See also: +'
nil
unfortunately we can't get a string of it simply, but we can always rebind the *out* to be a StringWriter, and then get its string value.
so, whan we want to take all the symbols from clojure.core namespace, get their docs, write them all to string, and find every one that contains "returns a lazy". Here comes the help: clojure.core/ns-publics, returning a map of public names to their vars:
user> (take 10 (ns-publics 'clojure.core))
([primitives-classnames #'clojure.core/primitives-classnames]
[+' #'clojure.core/+']
[decimal? #'clojure.core/decimal?]
[restart-agent #'clojure.core/restart-agent]
[sort-by #'clojure.core/sort-by]
[macroexpand #'clojure.core/macroexpand]
[ensure #'clojure.core/ensure]
[chunk-first #'clojure.core/chunk-first]
[eduction #'clojure.core/eduction]
[tree-seq #'clojure.core/tree-seq])
so we just need to get all the keys from there and lookup for their docs.
Let's make a macro for that:
user> (defmacro all-docs []
(let [names (keys (ns-publics 'clojure.core))]
`(binding [*out* (java.io.StringWriter.)]
(do ~#(map #(list `doc %) names))
(str *out*))))
#'user/all-docs
it does just what i've said, gets all publics' docs to string.
now we simply process it:
user> (def all-doc-items (clojure.string/split
(all-docs)
#"-------------------------"))
#'user/all-doc-items
user> (nth all-doc-items 10)
"\nclojure.core/tree-seq\n([branch? children root])\n Returns a lazy sequence of the nodes in a tree, via a depth-first walk.\n branch? must be a fn of one arg that returns true if passed a node\n that can have children (but may not). children must be a fn of one\n arg that returns a sequence of the children. Will only be called on\n nodes for which branch? returns true. Root is the root node of the\n tree.\n"
and now just filter them:
user> (def all-lazy-fns (filter #(re-find #"(?i)returns a lazy" %) all-doc-items))
#'user/all-lazy-fns
user> (count all-lazy-fns)
30
user> (println (take 3 all-lazy-fns))
(
clojure.core/tree-seq
([branch? children root])
Returns a lazy sequence of the nodes in a tree, via a depth-first walk.
branch? must be a fn of one arg that returns true if passed a node
that can have children (but may not). children must be a fn of one
arg that returns a sequence of the children. Will only be called on
nodes for which branch? returns true. Root is the root node of the tree.
clojure.core/keep-indexed
([f] [f coll])
Returns a lazy sequence of the non-nil results of (f index item). Note,
this means false return values will be included. f must be free of
side-effects. Returns a stateful transducer when no collection is
provided.
clojure.core/take-nth
([n] [n coll])
Returns a lazy seq of every nth item in coll. Returns a stateful
transducer when no collection is provided.
)
nil
And now use these all-lazy-fns however you want.
I want to get following results when I evaluate edit-url and (edit-url 1).
edit-url --> "/articles/:id/edit"
(edit-url 1) --> "/articles/1/edit"
Is it possible to define such a Var or something?
Now, I use following function, but I don't want to write (edit-url) to get const string.
(defn edit-url
([] "/articles/:id/edit")
([id] (str "/articles/" id "/edit")))
Thanks in advance.
If those behaviors are exactly what you want, print-method and tagged literals may be used to imitate them.
(defrecord Path [path]
clojure.lang.IFn
(invoke [this n]
(clojure.string/replace path ":id" (str n))))
(defmethod print-method Path [o ^java.io.Writer w]
(.write w (str "#path\"" (:path o) "\"")))
(set! *data-readers* (assoc *data-readers* 'path ->Path))
(comment
user=> (def p #path"/articles/:id/edit")
#'user/p
user=> p
#path"/articles/:id/edit"
user=> (p 1)
"/articles/1/edit"
user=>
)
edit-url will either have the value of an immutable string or function. Not both.
The problem will fade when you write a function with better abstraction that takes a string and a map of keywords to replace with words. It should work like this
(generate-url "/articles/:id/edit" {:id 1})
Clojure is a "Lisp 1" which means that is has a single namespace for all symbols, including both data scalars and functions. What you have written shows the functionally of both a string and a function but for a single name, which you can do in Common Lisp but not Clojure (not that a "Lisp 2" has its own inconveniences as well).
In general this type of "problem" is a non issue if you organize your vars better. Why not just make edit-url a function with variable arity? Without arguments it returns something, with arguments it returns something else. Really the possibilities are endless, even more so when you consider making a macro instead of a function (not that I'm advocating that).
How can I check if a value is NaN? I'd prefer a solution that can be used in Clojure too without much extra stuff (so I don't want to use an external library, such as underscore). Here is what I tried
(number? js/NaN) ;=> true, well I'd expect false
(= js/NaN (js/parseInt "xx")) ;=> false
(= js/NaN js/NaN) ;=> false, even worse
; This is the best I could come up with
(defn actual-number?
[n]
(or (> 0 n) (<= 0 n)))
You shouldn't compare NaN's - they're always unequal. You should be able to use javascript's built-in isNaN function like
(js/isNaN x)
You can use isNaN js function:
(js/isNaN ..)
Be aware that
(js/isNaN [1,2])
returns true. There are other many cases where js/isNaN does not correspond to what one expects.
If you're using underscore.js in the browser, you can delegate to (.isNaN js/_ ..) instead.
Otherwise, the following function should to the trick:
(defn isNaN [node]
(and (= (.call js/toString node) (str "[object Number]"))
(js/eval (str node " != +" node ))))
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.)