Why does the following Clojure program throw a NullPointerException?
user=> (defn x []
"Do two things if the expression is true."
(if true ((println "first expr") (println "second expr")) false))
user=> (x)
first expr
java.lang.NullPointerException (NO_SOURCE_FILE:0)
second expr
This is a simplified version of my actual use case, where I want to execute maybe three statements (pull values from the DB) before returning a map - {:status 200, :body "Hello World"} inside of the branch.
It is trying to treat the result of the first println as a function to call on the second println function.
You need a do.
(defn x []
"Do two things if the expression is true."
(if true (do (println "first expr") (println "second expr")) false))
(x)
The do special form (progn in CL, begin in Scheme) executes each of its arguments in sequence and returns the result of the last one.
If nil is ok as a return value in the else case, consider using when which has an implicit do block:
(defn x []
"Do two things if the expression is true."
(when true
(println "first expr")
(println "second expr")))
Not that it matters in your particular case, but do know the difference between (do ...) which will load each form in its own classloader, and an empty let form (let [] ...) which evaluates the whole form in a single classloader.
Related
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 am a bit puzzled with the behavior of if. The following code works fine:
(if true
(let [x "whatever"]
(println "TRUE 1")
(println "TRUE 2")))
returns:
TRUE 1
TRUE 2
nil
But if the let expression is removed:
(if true
(
(println "TRUE 1")
(println "TRUE 2")))
it returns a NullPointerException as well:
TRUE 1
TRUE 2
NullPointerException user/eval8051 (NO_SOURCE_FILE:4)
I suspect it is due to the println returning a nil. But then why does it work when a let is introduced? Is there a better way to do this?
The key part is this block
((println "TRUE 1")
(println "TRUE 2"))
What this does is evaluate the printlns, turning the expression into this:
(nil nil)
And then, because of the additional parenthesis, it tries to call nil as a function, with nil as the argument. Since nil is not a function, it throws the exception. The reason it worked in the first case was because it had the let to evaluate instead. Since a let will evaluate every expression in its body (and doesn't try to treat the results as a function), it behaves correctly.
If you want to evaluate multiple expressions, you should use do
(if true
(do (println "TRUE 1")
(println "TRUE 2")))
or, since there's no "else" part, you can just use when
(when true
(println "TRUE 1")
(println "TRUE 2"))
The important thing to remember is that in Clojure, unlike in C-style languages, you can't just add parenthesis around expressions without changing the meaning. If you wrap something in parenthesis (without quoting it), it's going to try and evaluate it as a function invocation.
While I may incorrectly interpret the concept of homoiconicity, I've understood it as 'code being data'.
So, I can write code like this:
(def subject "world")
(def helo '(str "Hello " subject))
At this point, helo is only data, but can be executed as code like this:
(eval helo)
which returns "Hello world".
I can also continue to treat helo as data:
(first helo)
(count helo)
which returns respectively str and 3.
So far so good. However, as soon as I wrap the code in a function, I seem to lose the ability to treat code as data:
(defn helofn [subject]
(str "Hello " subject))
How do I decompose helofn? It seems that I can't treat it as data; if I do this:
(count helofn)
I get an exception:
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: count not supported on this type: user$helofn
Is there another way to decompose helofn, or am I just expecting too much from homoiconicity?
The helofn definition is data, but you're letting it be evaluated (just as you explicitly evaluated the helo list). If you treated the definition in the same way as helo, then it will remain data, and amenable to whatever transformations you want to apply:
(def helofndata '(defn helofn [subject]
(str "Hello " subject))
=> (second helofndata)
helofn
=> (eval helofndata)
#'user/helofn
defn is just a macro:
(macroexpand '(defn helofn [subject]
(str "Hello " subject)))
(def helofn (clojure.core/fn ([subject] (str "Hello " subject))))
If you define helofn the way you defined helo, you'll be able to treat it as data:
(def helofn '(fn [subject]
(str "Hello " subject)))
Now you can eval and call this function:
((eval helofn) "world")
and to treat it as a data:
(count helofn)
But, when you use defn macro you associates helofn variable with compiled function and not with it's code.
It's not just functions. Let's say you defined hello with the following code:
(def helo (str "Hello " subject))
Now hello is associated with "Hello world" string and not with (str "Hello " subject) code. So, now there is no way to get the code this string was built with.
N.B. If you want to treat clojure code as data you should look into its macros. Any code passed to a macro is treated as data and any data returned by a macro is treated as code.
Homoiconicity is a very powerful concept and I don't think you are expecting too much from it.
defn is actually a macro that uses the def special form to define a function, so:
(defn sq [x]
(* x x))
Is actually equivalent to:
(def sq (fn ([x] (* x x))))
So defn here is receiving the args sq [x] (* x x), then builds the list (def sq (fn ([x] (* x x)))), returns it as the result of the macro and is then eval'ed. This is all done through the manipulation of lists, maps, vectors, symbols, etc., by the defn macro.
The fact that in Clojure you can't get the original list of symbols from which you defined a function, has to do with the fact that in Clojure all code is compiled. This is why evaluating (fn [x] 1) in the REPL returns something like #<user$eval809$fn__810 user$eval809$fn__810#10287d>
. But still, as mentioned in a previous answer, the code that is evaluated is data.
Maybe I'm going too far with this, but if you wanted to have for each function you define, the data from which it was created, you could add it to its metadata by creating your own custom macro.
Here's a naive implementation for such a macro:
(defmacro defn* [x & body ]
(let [form `'~&form
x (vary-meta x assoc :form form)]
`(defn ~x ~#body)))
;=> #'user/defn*
(defn* sq [x]
(* x x))
;=> #'user/sq
(:form (meta #'sq))
;=> (defn* sq [x] (* x x))
&form is an implicit argument (together with &env) that contains the whole (unevaluated) form with which the macro was called (i.e. the data that is evaluated by the compiler).
Hope this helps and it doesn't bring more confusion.
It looks like no based on
get a clojure function's code
and
Can you get the "code as data" of a loaded function in Clojure?
Basically you can get the source from a function defined in a .clj file but there's no reliable way to retrieve the data structures that built a function from the function alone.
EDIT: Also I think you are expecting too much from homoiconicity. The code itself is data yes but it's fairly standard to not be able to retrieve the original source code based on the artifact emitted by that code. Like when I have 2 I have no way of knowing that it was produced by (+ 1 1) or (- 4 2) in the same way a function is a piece of data created by calling fn over some other data structures that get interpreted as code.
I am a little confused by the clojure instance? function. It seems quite happy to take a single argument. So
(instance? String)
works fine, but always returns false.
Am I missing something here? I've done this twice in two days, and both times it took me a quite a long time to debug (yes, I agree, to make the mistake once might be regarded as misfortune, but twice looks like carelessness).
Why doesn't it break, with an arity error?
Note added later:
As of Clojure 1.6 this has been fixed!
http://dev.clojure.org/jira/browse/CLJ-1171
Interesting... even though instance? is defined in core.clj, it appears that there is special handling built in to clojure.lang.Compiler for (instance?) forms.
Compiler.java, line 3498:
if(fexpr instanceof VarExpr && ((VarExpr)fexpr).var.equals(INSTANCE))
{
if(RT.second(form) instanceof Symbol)
{
Class c = HostExpr.maybeClass(RT.second(form),false);
if(c != null)
return new InstanceOfExpr(c, analyze(context, RT.third(form)));
}
}
I interpret that to mean that, when you compile/evaluate an (instance?) form, the function defined in core.clj is ignored in favor of the hard-wired behavior, which does interpret a missing second argument as nil. I'm guessing this is done for performance reasons, as a sort of in-lining.
Apparently this special handling only applies in certain cases (and I'm not familiar enough with the compiler to know what they are). As illustrated by Ankur's answer, there are ways of calling instance? that cause the function defined in core.clj to be invoked.
I think it is a bug. If you define a new version of instance?, e.g.
(def
^{:arglists '([^Class c x])
:doc "Evaluates x and tests if it is an instance of the class
c. Returns true or false"
:added "1.0"}
foo? (fn foo? [^Class c x] (. c (isInstance x))))
you will get the expected exception
user=> (foo? String "bar")
true
user=> (foo? String 1)
false
user=> (foo? String)
ArityException Wrong number of args (1) passed to: user$foo-QMARK- clojure.lang.AFn.throwArity (AFn.java:437)
If you look at the instance? code you will see that the method isInstance of Class is called:
(def
^{:arglists '([^Class c x])
:doc "Evaluates x and tests if it is an instance of the class
c. Returns true or false"
:added "1.0"}
instance? (fn instance? [^Class c x] (. c (isInstance x))))
Looks like under the hood, nil (or false) is considered as the default value for x parameter when passed to the isInstance and that returns false.
Hmm....interesting... all the below calls fails (which is how it is supposed to be):
user=> (.invoke instance? String)
ArityException Wrong number of args (1) passed to: core$instance-QMARK- clojure.lang.AFn.throwArity (AFn.java:437)
user=> (instance? (type ""))
ArityException Wrong number of args (1) passed to: core$instance-QMARK- clojure.lang.AFn.throwArity (AFn.java:437)
user=> (apply instance? String [])
ArityException Wrong number of args (1) passed to: core$instance-QMARK- clojure.lang.AFn.throwArity (AFn.java:437)
user=> (#'instance? Long)
ArityException Wrong number of args (1) passed to: core$instance-QMARK- clojure.lang.AFn.throwArity (AFn.java:437)
Event creating a new instance of "instance?" function object works as it is supposed to work:
user=> (def a (.newInstance (aget (.getConstructors (type instance?)) 0) (into-array [])))
#'user/a
user=> (a String)
ArityException Wrong number of args (1) passed to: core$instance-QMARK- clojure.lang.AFn.throwArity (AFn.java:437)
user=> (a String "")
true
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.)