[cwn] Attn: Development Editor, Latest Caml Weekly News
Alan Schmitt
alan.schmitt at polytechnique.org
Tue Jul 12 00:29:53 PDT 2005
Hello,
Here is the latest Caml Weekly News, for the week of 05 to 12 July,
2005.
1) Sparse structure
2) LablGtkSourceView
3) Line printer daemon
4) Polymorphic map and OO syntax extension
5) LablPCRE - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml
6) Wyrd 1.0.0
========================================================================
1) Sparse structure
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/29537>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Chris King asked and Jacques Garrigue answered:
> I'm trying to create a sparse structure; i.e. a large structure which
> doesn't allocate storage for "unused" fields. Given a structure:
>
> type foo = { a: int option; b: float option }
>
> the best solution I can come up with, short of using Obj.magic, is to
> use a hash table like this:
>
> type foo_key = A_key | B_key
> type foo_value = A_value of int | B_value of float
> type sparse = (foo_key, foo_value) Hashtbl.t
>
> which works, but the extra variant type required means more CPU time
> and more keystrokes. Is there a better solution than this?
>
> The structure will have hundreds of fields, each with a different
> type. Most of the fields will be unused, but usage will be
determined
> at runtime so using objects is not an option.
This is a classical problem, with no good solution that I know.
If you want to avoid Obj.magic, then your solution seems OK, yet
* if your values are really sparse, Map might be better than Hashtbl
(more compact representation)
* if you have really hundreds of fields, then you have better switch
to polymorphic variants, as normal ones only allow about 240 cases.
If you are ready to use a bit of Obj, then there are some other
solutions.
For instance, you could do something like this.
module Int = struct type t = int let compare : int -> int -> int =
compare end
module M = Map.Make(Int)
type +'a elt
type 'a map = 'a elt M.t
let addA (x : 'a) (m : [> `A of 'a] map) =
M.add (Obj.magic `A) (Obj.magic x) m
let addB (x : 'a) (m : [> `B of 'a] map) =
M.add (Obj.magic `B) (Obj.magic x) m
let getA (m : [> `A of 'a] map) : 'a =
Obj.magic (M.find (Obj.magic `A) m)
let getB (m : [> `B of 'a] map) : 'a =
Obj.magic (M.find (Obj.magic `B) m)
Note that the result is completely type safe, and you don't need all
maps to contain the same potential fields.
The downside is that you need to define set and get for all fields.
On the other hand, it should be easy to define camlp4 macros
enforcing the same type annotations, avoiding such definitions.
(Polymorphic variants here are only used as phantom types. Note
however that this choice is useful: it ensures that two keys cannot
conflict, as if `A and `B had the same hash values, this would be
detected when constructing the type [> `A of 'a | `B of 'b])
** Chris King then asked and Jacques Garrigue answered:
> Thanks, that works great! I'm curious though, what is the purpose of
> the elt type? Is it to enforce the use of the map type instead of
> M.t?
Not exactly. [map] is only an abbreviation, used to shorten types in
the rest of the code. [elt] is more fundamental: it both hides the
contents of the map, by being abstract (so you can only access them
through Obj.magic), and has a type parameter which will be used to
enforce the relation between key and data type.
By the way, I've started experimenting with a camlp4 syntax extension
for that, and it seems to works nicely. I'll post it when it gets
cleaner.
========================================================================
2) LablGtkSourceView
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/29547>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Stefano Zacchiroli announced:
I'm pleased to announce the first public release of LablGtkSourceView,
OCaml binding for GtkSourceView (<http://
gtksourceview.sourceforge.net/>),
a GTK widget which extends the standrd GTK text widgets implementing
syntax highlighting, automatic indentation, and other typical features
of source editors.
ATM not many methods of the widget are bound, but it is already possible
to instantiate widgets, load .lang files which describe syntax
highlighting, and enable/disable core features like automatic
indentation, tab sizes, line numbers, ...
Bound widgets properly fit in the LablGtk class hierarchy.
LablGtkSourceView is distributed under the term of the GNU Lesser
General Public License (LGPL) and is available for download here:
<http://helm.cs.unibo.it/software/lablgtksourceview/>
** David Baelde asked and Stefano Zacchiroli answered:
> Many people probably want to know: is there a OCaml.lang for
> specifying OCaml syntax/indentation for GtkSourceView ? Could be
> useful for that ongoing OCamlIDE project...
I'm not aware of such a .lang and at the moment I'm not interested in
writing it. That said, writing a .lang is relatively easy and there are
a lot of examples in gedit (the more widespread application which uses
GtkSourceView), also monodevelop uses it and probably has an archive of
.lang files but I've never looked at them.
> But I haven't found anything about auto-indent customization. Is it
> possible ?
GtkSourceView support auto-indent and in LablGtkSourceView you can
enable it either from the constructor (?auto_indent param) or with
set_auto_indent. However the supported form of automatic indentation is
more limited than those found in emacs or vim. GtkSourceView indeed
support only indentation preservation (i.e. when starting a new line
copy the amount of indent of the last one).
On top of that implementing automatic indentation similar to vim's
smartindent (i.e. augment the indentation if last line ends with a word
in a given set, e.g. "then", "do", ...) should be relatively easy and I
plan to do it in next releases of LablGtkSourceView.
** Eric Cooper also answered:
> Many people probably want to know: is there a OCaml.lang for
specifying
> OCaml syntax/indentation for GtkSourceView ? Could be useful for that
> ongoing OCamlIDE project...
Here's a first cut at one:
<http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ecc/ocaml.lang>
On Debian at least, you can put this in
~/.gnome2/gtksourceview-1.0/language-specs/
You will also need MIME types recognized for OCaml programs.
Put the following in ~/.local/share/mime/globs:
text/x-ocaml:*.ml
text/x-ocaml:*.mli
(On other systems, it might be useful to run
strace -e trace=file gedit foo.ml
to find out where it's looking for these definitions.)
========================================================================
3) Line printer daemon
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/29559>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Christophe Troestler announced:
I am happy to announce that the Lpd program now is a library!
Lpd allows you to build Line Printer Daemons and bind your own actions
to LPD events. See <http://ocaml-lpd.sourceforge.net/>
The Lpd library is released under the LGPL with the std Ocaml library
exception. The two example programs are under the GLP.
========================================================================
4) Polymorphic map and OO syntax extension
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/29558>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Jacques Garrigue announced:
I've just put together some code bits I thought my be interesting for
others.
You can find them at
<http://www.math.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~garrigue/code/ocaml.html>
OO syntax extension
Some camlp4 syntax extensions to write more compact code using
objects. The new syntaxes are
* val [mutable] x = expr with (reader|writer|accessor)
generates code for an x and a set_x method, like in ruby.
* obj#x <- expr
generates a call to the set_x method.
* {| [mutable] f1 = expr1; ...; [mutable] fn = exprn |}
generates an immediate object with the above fields and the
corresponding accessor methods. You may also include inherit
declarations.
Polymap
This is a tiny module combined with a camlp4 extension, which
allows you to define polymorphic mappings, where the type of the
data depends on the key. (The syntax is strange, but I had no
better idea.)
$ ocaml camlp4o.cma pa_polymap.cmo polymap.cmo
# let m = `{x=1; y=true};;
val m : [> `x of int | `y of bool ] Polymap.t =
# let m = `{m with z = "hello"};;
val m : [> `x of int | `y of bool | `z of string ] Polymap.t =
# m.`y;;
- : bool = true
# `{m with x = "a"};;
^
Types for tag `x are incompatible
# m.`u;;
Exception: Not_found.
========================================================================
5) LablPCRE - a PCRE binding for Objective Caml
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/29571>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Robert Roessler announced:
The initial public release of the LablPCRE OCaml binding for PCRE is
now available, providing access to the POSIX regular expression
pattern matching API of PCRE (the latest "6.1" release of PCRE is
currently supported).
With an emphasis on simplicity and ease of use, LablPCRE offers a
small-footprint interface: four functions and a handful of public
methods in a returned "regresult" object.
While I consider functionality to be largely complete, feedback on
features or usability is of course welcomed... I especially encourage
contributions to the supported build environments in the package's
Makefile, and will integrate the common ones into future releases.
With a distribution incorporating pre-built Windows binaries, LablPCRE
is released under the "new" BSD license, and may be downloaded here:
<http://www.rftp.com/Downloads.shtml>
========================================================================
6) Wyrd 1.0.0
Archive: <http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.caml.general/29441>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
** Owen Gunden announced:
There is now a GODI package for Wyrd (see details below).
Paul Pelzl wrote:
> "Wyrd is a curses front-end for Remind, a powerful calendar and alarm
> application. The display features a scrollable day calendar
suitable for
> visualizing your schedule at a glance. Wyrd integrates with an
external
> editor of your choice to make manual editing of reminder files more
> efficient. Other features include significant configurability and
> Mutt-like interface design."
>
> <http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~pelzlpj/wyrd>
========================================================================
Using folding to read the cwn in vim 6+
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a quick trick to help you read this CWN if you are viewing it
using
vim (version 6 or greater).
:set foldmethod=expr
:set foldexpr=getline(v:lnum)=~'^=\\{78}$'?'<1':1
zM
If you know of a better way, please let me know.
========================================================================
Old cwn
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========================================================================
Alan Schmitt, <http://sardes.inrialpes.fr/~aschmitt/>
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