Re: [Emacs-diffs] master f6b5db6: Add support for generators

[Daniel Colascione]

On 03/03/2015 01:03 PM, Daniel Colascione wrote:
> On 03/03/2015 11:35 AM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>>> Do we want to document it as a function?  Maybe it would be better to
>>>> document it as an "object" of unspecified implementation (i.e. calling
>>>> it via funcall rather than via iter-next is unsupported).
>>
>>> The iterator is an opaque object; a generator (of which an iterator is
>>> an instance) is always a function. How can I make that clear?
>>
>> As I mentioned a bit further, the explanation about the difference
>> between an iterator and a generator clarifies this, but comes
>> a bit late.
> 
> Right. I'm not sure that level of detail is appropriate for the chapter
> introduction though.
> 
>>>> To get back to iter-close, this seems to be a tricky aspect of the
>>>> implementation.  Could you give me more details, such as an example
>>>> problematic case where calling iter-close makes a difference?
>>>> I guess this has to do with those finalizers, so if you could explain
>>>> how/why these are used, I'd really appreciate it.
>>
>>> In conventional Emacs Lisp, we're able to use unwind-protect to clean up
>>> resources. I'd like generator functions to be as similar to regular Lisp
>>> code as possible, and without support for closing iterators, preferably
>>> automatically after GC, we'll violate this user expectation. Sure, it's
>>> probably possible to work around the absence in specific cases, but
>>> having to very careful will lead to leaks. The Python people had to add
>>> a very similar feature in PEP 342 for much the same reason.
>>
>> I'm inclined to believe you that it's needed, but I'd really like to see
>> some good explanation for why, probably with a motivating example.
>> Ideally in a comment somewhere.
> 
> I don't have one yet, and that's mostly because the higher-level
> facilities I want to build on top of generators don't exist yet. In
> particularly, I'd like to build something that makes process filters
> easier to write, that would allow you to write something like
> 
>   (let ((line (iter-yield-from (easy-filter-read-line-async mumble)))
>     ;; Emacs runs while we're reading the line!
>     (do-something line))
> 
> I don't want to iter-close later: if we add it, we'll change the
> semantics of existing unwind-protect blocks. It feels better to do it
> right from the start. I can think a few possible resources we might want
> to clean up: what if we want to unload a module when it's no longer
> needed? Kill a hidden buffer? Remove overlays? Kill a subprocess? Delete
> a file?
> 
>>>>> +  (let* ((state (cl-gensym (format "cps-state-%s-" kind))))
>>>> ^^^^^^^^^
>>>> Elisp prefers make-symbol.
>>
>>> cl-gensym makes it possible to actually read the code the macro
>>> produces. A wrapper that conditionally calls make-symbol should suffice.
>>
>> A wrapper is not worth the trouble.
> 
> I added one already. Mind leaving it there?
> 
>> As for making `make-symbol' code readable, I use (setq print-gensym t)
>> and/or (setq print-circle t).
>>
>>> Yes, we probably should --- but if we do that, we should impose some
>>> kind of sane time limit on unwind-protect unwindforms in order to avoid
>>> freezing Emacs. That is, we should be able to recover from
>>> (unwind-protect nil (while t)) without having to attach a debugger or
>>> send a signal.
>>
>> We should be able to recover from an inf-loop inside inhibit-quit in any
>> case, yes.  Normally C-g C-g C-g does it, but it kind of defeats the
>> purpose in this case since users my lean on C-g without realizing that
>> it has a different meaning.
>>
>>>> `(iter--blabla ,value (lambda (x) (iter-yield x)))
>>> What do you mean?
>>
>> Move the unwind-protect and the loop into a separate higher-order function.
> 
> I'm not sure that would help. We need to keep the `iter-yield' in the
> body of the calling function in order to be correct.
> 
>>> Fixed in a subsequent commit. Manually, though: maybe
>>> macroexp-parse-body is the right thing.
>>
>> Yes, it's the new thing recently introduced, so that it handle "all" the
>> special declaration-like thingies (docstrings, declare, cl-declare, you
>> name it).
> 
> Neat. Fixed. It's a shame we can't use it in `defmacro'.

It's buggy for empty functions:

ELISP> (macroexp-parse-body '("foo" (declare indent 5)))
(("foo")
 (declare indent 5))

ELISP> (macroexp-parse-body '("foo" (declare indent 5) nil))
(("foo"
  (declare indent 5))
 nil)

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