Re: [Bug-apl] Error handling and IO

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hi Elias, that construct is already in place, called an EOC (end-of-context) handler . However, using EOC handlers appears to be easy, but using them properly is extremely difficult, because they require very detailed knowledge of the internals of GNU APL. For example, if your native function is used together with an operator (typically the EACH or the POWER operator) then every iteration of the operator may construct a new )SI frame (and call its EOC handlers when finished, except for the last iteration). And you there could be have multiple EOC handlers in the same )SI frame. There is a fairly large number of previous trouble reports that were caused by improper use of EOC handlers (by myself). EOC handlers are one of the two most difficult (read: error-prone) areas in GNU APL (the other one being output formatting). Besides the trouble that EOC handlers cause, it is not really clear to me under which circumstances it would make sense to defer the handling of an error until the )SI stack is popped (as opposed to handling it right away). If all you need is a APL function cleanup that is called after some other function foo has finished (with an error or not) then you could do something like:       cleanup ⊢ '' ⎕EA 'foo' This is somewhat ugly because you do it above foo rather than inside foo, but it is beautiful when compared to an EOC solution /// Jürgen On 04/20/2016 08:31 AM, Elias Mårtenson wrote: Do you think it would be possible to implement a "finally" construct for native libraries? Basically, what I'm asking for is the ability to register a callback with a specific stack frame that is called when that frame is unrolled. Regards, Elias On 14 Apr 2016 01:51, "Juergen Sauermann" <juergen.sauerm...@t-online.de> wrote: Hi Kacper et al, I understand. But I would say that using ⎕EA as you describe is exactly how cleanup should be done. I see ⎕EA not like (as the name may suggest) a means of trying different paths until one succeeds like in: 'try_A' ⎕EA 'try_B' ⎕EA 'try_C' ... but rather as: 'cleanup_failed_B' ⎕EA 'try_B' I also don;t see a good way of introducing a defer function without introducing a dubious APL syntax extension that would be difficult to read for people not knowing the extended syntax. For the sake of compatibility, such things should, IMHO, be avoided. /// Jürgen On 04/12/2016 02:10 AM, Kacper Gutowski wrote: If I understand correctly, Elias wants to have something that would ensure that every file opened is eventually closed (only more general so it can be applied to any external resources not only files). That is in a code similar to the following, to ensure the line 3 is always run even if there's an error in FUN. [1] FD←⎕FIO[3]STH [2] FUN FD [3] ⎕FIO[4]FD This can be ensured by wrapping FUN call with ⎕EA or ⎕EC. They return to the caller instead of suspending execution if error happens and this is correct and expected behaviour. But the intention is to have the file closed, not making the function unsuspendable, so this would be a side effect of the solution of using ⎕EA rather than the intended behaviour. But this doesn't mean there's anything wrong with ⎕EA or ⎕EC, of course. My understanding is that requested is some way to associate some kind of clean up code with )SI entry that would be run upon that entry being cleared from )SI regardless of how that happens. The way I imagine it, it could look like this (using an imaginary function ‘defer’ with a name borrowed from Golang; not an actual transcript): ∇ FOO [1] FD←⎕FIO[3]STH [2] defer '⎕FIO[4]FD' [3] FUN FD [4] other stuff ∇ STH←'filename' ⎕FX 'FUN F' '1+' FOO SYNTAX ERROR FUN[1] 1+ ^^ ⍝ here situation can be examined )VARS F FD )SIS FUN[1] 1+ ^^ FOO[3] FUN FD ^ ⋆ FOO ^ → ⍝ here ⎕FIO[4]FD is executed -k