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15:22:35
Xach_
Shinmera: i'm having an odd issue where i can't build qtools from a warm fasl cache due to VERBOSE symbol issues. i suspect it's a case where something builds the fasl with :verbose but then a subsequent load of the fasl is done without verbose.
15:49:04
Shinmera
fe[nl]ix: In this case they just provide some debug info if a logging system is present
15:49:39
fe[nl]ix
since Quicklisp makes it easy to download all dependencies it makes no sense to resort to that kind of optimization
15:50:13
Shinmera
fe[nl]ix: I don't want to force a dep that launches threads and stuff onto people that don't need it.
16:41:31
antoszka
Guys, trying to fire up sbcl in shell with linedit (which I do sometimes, nvm the reasons), I'm now getting: http://wklej.org/id/3330582/ ← any hints where to look for problems? madeira-port quickloads without any issues in Slime.
16:46:24
makomo_
what does "expanded" mean in "If the backquote syntax is nested, the innermost backquoted form should be expanded first."? http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/02_df.htm
16:54:32
makomo
Zhivago: so "expansion" here refers just to the process of "substitution". whether any substitutions are made or not is a matter of the level of quoting/unquoting done, right?
16:55:15
makomo
for example, ``(,,a2); (,a2) is the "innermost backquoted form" but the substitution process doesn't actually substitute any values
16:56:15
makomo
true, but i thought "substitution" is somehow more clear, however "substitution" is also used only once on that page
17:08:46
rpg
Does anyone know how to refer to the currently inspected object using slime-inspector-eval?
17:09:12
rpg
The docstring isn't very helpful: "Evaluate an expression in the context of the inspected object."
17:50:35
peterpp
I'm new to lisp and am about to use s-expressions for the first time as a configuration file format... I'm wondering if there's anything I should watch out for
17:51:17
peterpp
my understanding is that using s-expressions for this purpose is a rather common thing to do?
17:58:47
shka
it is not urgent, just regarding documentation-utils -- i think that we don't connect perfectly
17:59:21
peterpp
ebrasca, do you happen to have an example of a config file that uses s-epxrs that you could show me?
18:02:05
Xach_
Shinmera: hmm, it's not sufficient just to rebuild qtools with fresh fasls, it seems that other projects that require qtools will trigger the fasl symbol issue.
18:03:04
peterpp
oh man I had no idea stumpwm is so well maintained... I just looked at the recent commit history on github
18:03:41
sjl
peterpp: if you're using READ to parse the config file, be aware that it can execute arbitrary code, e.g. (:username #.(run-program "rm -rf /")
18:04:36
peterpp
no, just generally wanted to take inspiration from config file formats that rely on s-expressions
18:05:40
sjl
so if you want to use untrusted config files, you'll probably want something like cl-secure-read
18:07:04
__sigjuice__
.swank.lisp is another example that comes to mind. https://common-lisp.net/project/slime/doc/html/Other-configurables.html#Other-configurables
18:12:43
__sigjuice__
peterpp: my imagination should be considered very limited, but I can't envision needing anything more complicated than a pile of special variables
18:33:25
sjl
I've looked at Shen a little bit, but the development environment isn't nearly as mature as something like CL+Slime
18:34:45
jasom
makomo: cool, also note cl-json ships with two different ways of generating keywords from strings, one of which will refuse to intern new symbols (which is good if you're concerned about someone sending you a billion different keywords to use up all your server RAM)
18:37:48
peterpp
I'm struggling with how lisp-mode indents my source code: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/d87c3cf2a2c4fc85e0ee60b12e71f183
18:39:37
jasom
peterpp: that would be code that is calling the function named :foo with the arguments :bar :baz :boom
18:42:20
jasom
though I'm not in pure lisp-mode, I'm running slime, I don't think it makes a difference for this case, but I can try in a bit
18:42:38
peterpp
hmm for me lisp-mode still indents the wrong way... good to know it works on your machine though, I guess I messed something up
18:46:02
jasom
hmm, bare lisp-mode does seem to do it the way you see (e.g. *scratch* indents my example wrongly)
18:46:08
parjanya
parjanya: I’m a newcomer (too?), but I’ve seen a good chunk of that attitude of melancholia and lack of interaction with other people
18:51:41
jasom
peterpp: don't worry about it. That sounds like a problem with emacs or slime. If you figure out how to reproduce it, let me know
18:54:52
jasom
parjanya: Taver's essay is problematic, if for no other reason than that the symptoms described are not bipolar.
19:00:33
peterpp
I must say... you folks are a lot more enjoyable to talk to than the folks I met in most other programming-related irc channels
19:04:05
parjanya
jasom: yes, it’s quite an imprecise use of the term... I don’t know enough about lispers to say anything meaningful, but I know plenty of the kind of people he describes, from school on
19:06:11
mlau
: don't worry about it. That sounds like a problem with emacs or slime. If you figure out how
19:20:17
makomo
jasom: mhm, i remember you mentioned that. however, cl-json:*identifier-name-to-key* isn't mentioned anywhere in the docs
19:20:33
makomo
the variable holds the function which turns a string into an object that will be used as the key
19:21:28
makomo
there's just a little note somewhere about JSON-INTERN and JSON-SAFE-INTERN, but no mention of how to actually swap one with the other (or use your own version)
19:21:53
makomo
i.e. *IDENTIFIER-NAME-TO-KEY* isn't documented, at least not in https://common-lisp.net/project/cl-json/
19:22:48
pjb
You can measure how bad a system is by measuring how much it's talked about in help channels. JSON is very bad. Why don't you just use SEXPS?
19:23:28
makomo
well, the data i pulled from the web is in JSON, so i have no other choice right now
19:23:42
makomo
however, i was thinking of switching the data over to either sexps or into an SQL database
19:32:17
peterpp
pjb, in what way do you consider s-expressions superior to json for this purpose? (genuine question from a lisp newbie)
19:35:41
dmiles
JSON implies an exact structural meaning. whereas s-expressions (depending on the content can have differnt meanings beyond structure)
19:36:18
rme
Of course, s-expressions are very easy to print and read from lisp (just like json is in javascript).
19:37:52
dmiles
jasom: yeah true JSON-LD (link data) encourages such meanings to be preformed based on operators
19:38:30
jasom
obviously there are things that you can represent in JSON that are harder to represent in sexps and vice-versa
19:42:03
dmiles
oh true i see what you mean .. if we wanted to we could even have multiple types of nils
19:42:20
jasom
communicating between two lisp programs with JSON is rather silly, but JSON isn't inherently worse or better than sexps for other cases.
19:43:19
pjb
peterpp: the superiority of sexp is that it's designed for lisp objects (mind you, not all of them, but a sizeable subset of them). So it works well to communicate between lisp processes.
19:44:55
jasom
peterpp: I'm not necessarily recommending this, but here's an example of me using an actual lisp file for configuration; I just LOAD it: https://github.com/jasom/cl-fccs/blob/master/config.lisp
19:48:09
dmiles
yeah the point of json-ld is to document the various complex meaning-rich json encodings, just like IKL (Icarus language) document the various complex meaning-rich s-expressions
19:51:02
caffe
silly question.. i've been playing around, and noticed that things like :foo do not result in a debugger prompt or error. is there a use for this, or some way i can define a function to those symbols(?)
19:54:51
rpg
dmiles: I thought json-ld was just to let people smear JSON data across different documents?
19:58:24
caffe
what i was hoping for was a way to define a shorthand command to be used in the repl, similar to commands in the lisp listener prefixed with a colon
19:59:08
rpg
caffe: those commands are defined using special facilities that are not the same as DEFUN.
19:59:27
dmiles
analysis for after the json object is plastered to the page ["loves", "john", "martha"] .. ahah there was a loveful event involving john towards something
19:59:54
rpg
caffe: The :-commands used in ACL's repl or SBCL's ACLREPL are defined with a special defining macro.
20:01:25
rpg
dmiles: OWL was intended to be able to say what a particular data item "means", but has been less than satisfactory for a number of reasons. IMNSHO the use of description logic for its semantics was a total disaster.
20:02:50
rpg
Not only the rule of least power, but also because it's a *logical* notation that *looks like* an object-oriented notation, meaning that the vast majority of people -- even very sophisticated people -- who use it don't understand what it means.
20:03:26
rpg
The essence of OO programming is mutation, so giving people a notation that looks like OO, but in which mutation is forbidden is nutso.
20:03:33
caffe
or rather, are the facilities for defining those macros unique to their implementations? (clim listener, slime, etc)
20:04:43
dmiles
instead of description logic, we should have used situatation/fluent calculus which is what congress paid for in funding the research
20:06:05
rpg
dmiles: Worked on a project where we tried to use OWL-S (the OWL-based webservices markup language). Wow! Having a language for describing computation that has no provision for state change or for the concept of "variable" was a total trainwreck.
20:06:34
rpg
oh yeah, and it couldn't deal with the fact that web services often produce *knowledge* about things in the world.
20:06:37
dmiles
(congress was sold on the abilites of inference engines that used dynamicly mutating situations that transacted using inferred states)
20:07:33
rpg
In my experience there are now tons of systems that use the *syntax* of OWL, but that have widely diverging semantics, or no semantics at all.
20:08:11
rpg
(for those who have heard the "Car Talk" radio show, I should have said "don't get me stahted!")
20:10:03
rpg
caffe: I don't fully understand the comma commands for SLIME because they seem somewhat awkwardly split across emacs-lisp and common lisp.
20:10:43
dmiles
rpg: what relaly bugs me is for 5 years prior to the semantic web, myself and many people were doing all the things the semantic web dreammed of
20:11:25
rpg
what really bugs *me* is that it's clear that no one could have tried to use OWL-S or DAML seriously before trying to foist it on the world at large.
20:11:34
caffe
i don't personally use SLIME much. i'm more familiar with them in clim-listener, but i'd like to hack together something similar that works in a plain sbcl repl just the same as it would in the listener, or slime, etc
20:12:41
dmiles
(yet the semaantic web *prevented* specifically the logical representations required to perform those tasks)
20:13:37
rpg
caffe: I think that would be pretty hard, at least for SLIME, because of the way that its commands must be written in elisp. Also, for reasons I'm too lazy to understand, SLIME and (SB-ACLREPL and ACL's REPL) are incompatible. I think it's probably because SLIME has to parse all the stuff that goes into the repl itself, so commands that are programmed into the underlying lisp aren't understandable
20:14:12
rpg
dmiles: It's afternoon here and I *must* eat or I will start chewing my keyboard. TTYL, I hope.
20:14:32
dmiles
rpg: one day i was translating English to KIF and then back to English (round tripping), my supervisor told me to start billing DAML project
20:16:59
caffe
i'll start by picking apart SB-ACLREPL to get a better understanding of what i'm dealing with, and/or see if that's something i could make use of
20:54:47
antoszka
It may actually give you additional insight into the way your structures actually *reuse* data.
23:02:49
le4fy
jmercouris: definitely sub-optimal word choice w/ "bipolar". but if you're a little forgiving i think it is still a decent point
23:03:36
le4fy
the point being "lispers" tend to work hard on interesting problems, and can easily lack motivation when forced to do something they don't believe in
23:14:56
jasom
le4fy: I'll have to reread that essay, because that's a much kinder interpretation than I remember getting
23:19:08
le4fy
mine was one that was relatively kind to the lisper, but understood the lisper as being stuck in a world of bullshit
23:21:06
le4fy
i read this essay (a couple years ago) at the same time i read this one (http://www.winestockwebdesign.com/Essays/Lisp_Curse.html)
23:51:30
aeth
I personally see Lisp as just another language (1) that is more multiparadigm than most languages (to make up numbers, you can do 45% of the paradigms in most languages and 84% in CL) and (2) where it is much easier to control when non-runtime evaluation happens than with most languages (lots of ways to do it, too).
23:52:04
aeth
I think essays about how Lisp is some special magic language and Lispers are rare geniuses aren't productive.
23:54:15
aeth
And if you're willing to give up portability to all implementations, there are some extensions that give even more power than CLHS offers.
23:54:42
aeth
(A new standard would be great to make all the popular and very useful extensions standard.)
23:57:49
aeth
Ironically, there probably needs to be an essay about how all the popular essays are wrong.
23:58:40
aeth
drdo: I always sneak in "there should be a new standard" as often as possible, in hopes that I can gradually get people used to the idea. Subtle propaganda.
23:59:04
aeth
Right now the ideology is that (1) there shouldn't be a new standard and (2) it's impossible to do one even if people wanted one
23:59:57
aeth
And, yeah, #2 is true if you're going for an ANSI or ISO or whatever standard. But no one cares about those anymore for programming languages. Scheme gets by fine with its rnrs.
0:01:32
aeth
Actually, the de facto Scheme standards are the SRFIs, and Schemes care about (some of) those.
0:01:44
aeth
Which is strange because it's the opposite in the CL world, where the CL equivalent of SRFIs are pretty much entirely ignored
0:02:38
aeth
But I would disagree about no one caring about the rnrs. People care about the r5rs so much that r6rs was rejected and r7rs has to basically be compatible with r5rs.
0:03:51
aeth
A modern Scheme is essentially extensions to r5rs or r7rs-small (and r7rs-small contains an r5rs compatibility mode... so I can just say "extensions to r5rs")
0:04:37
aeth
_death: The only way a new standard would work is if it took things that basically every popular implementation has and standardized them. e.g. gray streams.
0:05:29
aeth
_death: It would be useful to have a new baseline for a standard CL, though. Because a "standard CL" without support for the de facto standards is useless.
0:06:40
aeth
_death: But it would also be nice to up the minimums, and to have set minimums for each bit size. e.g. fixnums for 64-bit implementations should be at a minimum 60-bit signed-byte integers. Nearly every implementation will pass this. I think CLISP's is 48 or something, and only it will fail.
0:07:59
aeth
Afaik, CL standard sizes for things are made to be safe for 16 bit implementations. So... keep those for 16-31 bit implementations, have new minimums for 32-63 bit implementations, and have new minimums for 64+ bit implementations. Now you can make assumptions.
0:08:28
aeth
Right now, any CL application with strings longer than 1024 is technically not going to run on every possible standard CL implementation.
0:10:08
_death
I don't think you appreciate the weight of my statement.. since you seem to throw technical arguments at me :)
0:10:36
aeth
For the most part, no implementation would have to change except for ones that really go out of their way to not follow de facto standards, like CLISP. e.g. single-float and double-float and (unsigned-byte 8) arrays aren't guaranteed to exist. Only bit and character. But almost every implementation has these. (CLISP doesn't have them for floats, though.)
0:11:23
aeth
A ton of libraries assume these de facto standards that are technically not required by the standard.
0:14:01
aeth
Depending on how conservative the extensions part is (not the same as the minimums part), SBCL might not have to change at all. It has almost all of them already.
0:15:19
aeth
Other implementations would benefit, though, because they could rely on programs that are essentially written on and for SBCL.
0:26:15
_death
CL is a haven of stability, where not only your programs will still work in 20 years, but also the values and aesthetics of fellow programmers will remain palatable.. your code, way of writing code, way of thinking about problems won't turn "legacy" just because some committee out there put out a new document, or some dude made a bunch of commits.. CL is flexible enough to remain relevant without change.. that is why CL will never be
0:26:21
aeth
Sizes of things (e.g. fixnum size), which specialized arrays are supported, which extensions are supported, etc., would make a useful table. Perhaps also some popular library support as well (e.g. bordeaux-threads, cffi, etc.)
0:27:28
aeth
_death: A successful extension to the CL standard makes new paradigms implementable in libraries, rather than directly implementing those new paradigms. e.g. things like this should stay as libraries: https://github.com/markcox80/specialization-store/
0:33:50
_death
(to clarify, I meant "successful" in the usual way it is used by professionals, i.e. "popular")
0:35:00
aeth
_death: Popularity doesn't have anything to do with quality, or really anything that a language can control. Languages have network effects, just like Facebook does. You can make a better social network, but that doesn't mean people will go there.
0:35:50
aeth
_death: But on the flip side, that doesn't mean CL will never be popular among programmers. What tends to work with programming languages is the "killer app" concept that works with platforms in general, except instead of "app" it's more about the ecosystem. e.g. Rails is the reason why most people use Ruby (or at least initially used Ruby, even if they switched to something else later)
0:36:17
Xach
_death: is it because the priests of SBCL are interpreting the oracular utterances of the spec?
0:40:04
aeth
(The really healthy languages like C++ and Python have multiple, very different things that draw people to the language.)
0:47:30
_death
I think it's sufficient to consider just the age of SBCL (incl. its origin) vs. the age of ASDF
0:48:01
stylewarning
__sigjuice__: every so often asdf is made “better” by introducing a small backwards incompatibility that fundamentally breaks 1–2% of the ecosystem but propagates transitively to a larger percentage.
0:48:42
aeth
Ah, I think I have the right way to get fixnum size. (integer-length (- most-positive-fixnum most-negative-fixnum))
0:49:07
aeth
(- most-positive-fixnum most-negative-fixnum) should be a bunch of 1s, and integer-length should give the exact length of that bunch of 1s
0:49:52
__sigjuice__
stylewarning: are these sorts of breaking changes known ahead of time via cl-test-grid perhaps?
0:50:09
|3b|
if you need both, the configuration is probably odd enough that a single 'size' number would be misleading anyway
1:25:54
rme
The last time we (ccl hackers) talked about an ARM64 port, we were considering using high tags. This would mean a fixnum would be a (signed-byte 56).
1:27:34
|3b|
could you still do the usual trick of dedicating 1/2 or whatever of the tags to fixnums to get some of the bits back?
1:30:06
rme
I think we were talking about tagging fixnums with sign extension so that fixnump would be quick (like 3 instructions).
1:31:29
|3b|
though fixnum size matters much less on 64bit than on 32... 24-bit fixnum is small enough to limit the size of bit-arrays on a reasonable system, 56 probably isn't :)
1:32:28
|3b|
seems like most of the time i get close to 64 bits i need all 64 bits, so doesn't really matter if fixnum is 56 or 63
1:37:56
fiddlerwoaroof
Is there someway to do something like an "integer pool" so that integers don't need to be tagged?
1:38:41
fiddlerwoaroof
i.e. something like setting aside a certain chunk of memory for integers and telling the garbage collector to ignore addresses in that area?
1:44:47
|3b|
and pretty much the point of a fixnum is that you /don't/ put it in some separate memory
1:45:41
|3b|
though if that was just a general question unrelated to fixnums, specialized arrays are pretty much that
1:45:43
fiddlerwoaroof
|3b|: didn't think of that, I was just wondering if there was some way to use all 64 bits without running into problems like integers being mistaken for pointers
1:46:36
Bike_
like if you had (let ((x (the (unsigned-byte 64) whatever))) ...) and x doesn't escape, sbcl can maybe do that, like it does for floats
1:46:52
|3b|
bignums let you use 64bits inefficiently, declared types let some compilers deal with 64-bit values directly, usually within some limited scope (like you probably still have to tag/box them to pass between functions)
1:52:08
fiddlerwoaroof
There's this: https://franz.com/support/documentation/cl-ansi-standard-draft-w-sidebar.pdf
1:53:49
pransninja
_death: Are you kidding me, right? it is the interface, the content seems okay from a lisp novice point of view.
1:55:30
pransninja
_death: Haha, come on, those script text in pictures and a layout that I still haven't figured out after two days of clicking around is absurd.
1:56:23
fiddlerwoaroof
franz has a different version: https://franz.com/support/documentation/10.1/ansicl/ansicl.htm
1:56:39
pransninja
The documents also lack a clear structure, not arguing that it is not there, typography that needs decipher defeats the purpose of typography.
1:56:45
Bike
what layout is there to figure out? you get to the table of contents and click chapter titles
1:57:46
fiddlerwoaroof
If you use mac/linux, something like Dash or Velocity makes it easier to refer to the relevant sections, but CLHS's license prevents people from modifying it.
1:58:49
fiddlerwoaroof
This has a bunch of the same info, but it's very much a work in progress: http://phoe.tymoon.eu/clus/doku.php?id=clus:todo
1:59:20
pransninja
I like that it makes sense, you go to index, you go to articles, you repeat. No other nonsense.
1:59:29
_death
pransninja: so when you pick up emacs, you can download an offline copy of the clhs and just use eww or emacs-w3m to browse it, and your concerns about typography and pictures will evaporate
2:00:30
fiddlerwoaroof
If you want to learn CL, it's probably better to start with something like Practical Common Lisp, Gentle or some other document
2:00:49
minion
pransninja: please see pcl: pcl-book: "Practical Common Lisp", an introduction to Common Lisp by Peter Seibel, available at http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and in dead-tree form from Apress (as of 11 April 2005).
2:00:54
minion
pransninja: please look at gentle: "Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation" is a smoother introduction to lisp programming. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/LispBook/