Re: [Bug-apl] Function definition information (extension proposal)

[David Lamkins]

I apologize for the confusion, but this proposal is about capturing the file location of a function's definition; not about the function's comments. My lead sentence was just an indicator that the earlier discussion of comments triggered this new line of thought...

On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Juergen Sauermann <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi,

my favourite for code documentation is Doxygen. It does not currently
support APL comments but we might be able to change that. Or use one
of the existing tags like --- for VHDL or %%% for Erlang.

It would need some changes in GNU APL - multi-line comments and
proper storage of documentation information in the function so that it
can de )DUMPed without loosing that information.

/// Jürgen

On 07/14/2014 07:56 PM, David Lamkins wrote:

Elias' thread about docstrings got me to thinking about other function metadata.

One thing that might be nice to have is for APL to record the source location of a function's definition.

If the function is defined in a file, record the path and the line number of the first line of the definition. If the function is defined from some other source, either record a suitable token that won't be confused for a filename or simply record nothing.

The source location information could be exposed to APL programs via an extension to ⎕AT or via a new system function created for this purpose.

Source location information could be used to implement a meta-dot command. Unlike an approach that requires use of a tags file (I'd be surprised if ctags or etags even works for APL code), the location information maintained by the APL session would be up-to-date and would correctly distinguish between a function loaded from a file and a function redefined from within the session.

Finally, it'd be nice to expose a system function to allow update of the source location metadata for use by tools which need to programatically load APL code from a file.

Note that capturing the source file location of a function definition is something that can't already be done in APL without writing APL equivalents of )LOAD, )COPY, )PCOPY, )IN, )PIN, etc.

--

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

   Albert Einstein

http://soundcloud.com/davidlamkins
http://reverbnation.com/lamkins
http://reverbnation.com/lcw
http://lamkins-guitar.com/
http://lamkins.net/
http://successful-lisp.com/

--

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

   Albert Einstein

http://soundcloud.com/davidlamkins
http://reverbnation.com/lamkins
http://reverbnation.com/lcw
http://lamkins-guitar.com/
http://lamkins.net/
http://successful-lisp.com/