Why do executables have different behavior that the repl behavior? - common-lisp

My Setup
I develop common lisp with emacs + slime. My machine is a mac pro M1. And, I use the kitty terminal emulator.
The Situation
When I run my app (see code at the end) in the repl, it works fine.
When I create and run the executable, it's as if the order of the program is different.
For example, I have 5 questions which asks for user input...
(defpackage custom-sender
;; import the exactly the symbols I need from a package
(:import-from :cl-json :encode-json-to-string)
(:use :cl)
(:export :main))
(in-package custom-sender)
(defun main()
(asking-questions))
(defun asking-questions ()
(let ((firstname (prompt-read "What is the firstname of the contact?"))
(email (prompt-read "What is their email?"))
(job (prompt-read "What is the job?"))
(first-line (prompt-read "what is the first line of their address?"))
(sending-account (prompt-read "Which email account do you want to send from? (e2, e3 etc)")))
(status-update "some text ~a" email);; <-- this function is executed BEFORE the "sending-account" question is asked
... ) ;;<-- end of let block
)
(defun status-update (message value)
(format *query-io* (concatenate 'string message "~C~C") value #\linefeed #\linefeed)
(force-output *query-io*))
(defun prompt-read (question)
(format *query-io* "~a: " question)
(read-line *query-io*)
(force-output *query-io*))
The Problem
When running the executable, there are two issues:
The first function (status-update...) is executed before the final prompt read. In the terminal, the question comes up but immediately exits. So I cannot enter anything.
Also... (status-update...) gets the value of email which is NIL. Even though I entered a value inside the terminal.
This entire process runs perfectly in the repl.
Note - I am building the executable with the ASD MAKE process.

(defun prompt-read (question)
(format *query-io* "~a: " question)
(read-line *query-io*)
(force-output *query-io*))
change it to something like this:
(defun prompt-read (question)
(format *query-io* "~a: " question)
(force-output *query-io*)
(read-line *query-io*)
(force-output *query-io*))
Otherwise the prompt may not be visible when the function is waiting for input..., due to a buffering output stream.
Streams may or may not buffer output. For portable programs you'd need to add operations to clear or force output.

Related

Why does it seem that the order of execution is not top->down in this function? [duplicate]

I don't understand why this code behaves differently in different implementations:
(format t "asdf")
(setq var (read))
In CLISP it behaves as would be expected, with the prompt printed followed by the read, but in SBCL it reads, then outputs. I read a bit on the internet and changed it:
(format t "asdf")
(force-output t)
(setq var (read))
This, again, works fine in CLISP, but in SBCL it still reads, then outputs. I even tried separating it into another function:
(defun output (string)
(format t string)
(force-output t))
(output "asdf")
(setq var (read))
And it still reads, then outputs. Am I not using force-output correctly or is this just an idiosyncrasy of SBCL?
You need to use FINISH-OUTPUT.
In systems with buffered output streams, some output remains in the output buffer until the output buffer is full (then it will be automatically written to the destination) or the output buffer is explicity emptied.
Common Lisp has three functions for that:
FINISH-OUTPUT, attempts to ensure that all output is done and THEN returns.
FORCE-OUTPUT, starts the remaining output, but IMMEDIATELY returns and does NOT wait for all output being done.
CLEAR-OUTPUT, tries to delete any pending output.
Also the T in FORCE-OUTPUT and FORMAT are unfortunately not the same.
force-output / finish-output: T is *terminal-io* and NIL is *standard-output*
FORMAT: T is *standard-output*
this should work:
(format t "asdf")
(finish-output nil) ; note the NIL
(setq var (read))

sdl2:load-bmp Problem with current working directory, common-lisp

While trying to work through cl-sdl2-tutorial, I'm having trouble loading a bitmap due to a wrong current working directory.
I'd like to get a proper solution to the problem using relative path names.
A minimal working example:
Having modified the code of example two from above mentioned tutorial.
(defpackage #:sdl2-tutorial-2
(:use :common-lisp)
(:export :main))
(in-package :sdl2-tutorial-2)
(defparameter *screen-width* 640)
(defparameter *screen-height* 480)
(defmacro with-window-surface ((window surface) &body body)
`(sdl2:with-init (:video)
(sdl2:with-window (,window
:title "SDL2 Tutorial"
:w *screen-width*
:h *screen-height*
:flags '(:shown))
(let ((,surface (sdl2:get-window-surface ,window)))
,#body))))
(defun main(&key (delay 2000))
(format t " cwd: ~a, ~% dpd: ~a, ~& e-p: ~a, ~% pf: ~a, ~& load: ~a"
(sb-posix:getcwd)
*default-pathname-defaults*
(uiop:file-exists-p "hello_world.bmp")
(probe-file "hello_world.bmp")
(sdl2:load-bmp "hello_world.bmp"))
(with-window-surface (window screen-surface)
(let ((image (sdl2:load-bmp "hello_world.bmp")))
(break "1 here with ~a~%" image)
(setf image (sdl2:load-bmp "hello_world.bmp"))
(break "2 here with ~a~%" image)
(break "3 error: ~a~%" (sdl2-ffi.functions:sdl-get-error))
(sdl2:blit-surface image
nil
screen-surface
nil)
(sdl2:update-window window)
(sdl2:with-event-loop (:method :poll)
(:quit () t)
(:idle ()
(sdl2:delay delay))))))
Before compiling above code and running (main), I changed working directory in the REPL, via:
(sb-posix:chdir (truename "/test/cl-sdl2-tutorial/2/"))
(setf *default-pathname-defaults* (truename "/test/cl-sdl2-tutorial/2/"))
The above code prints, as expected, when running (main) in the REPL:
SDL2-TUTORIAL-2> (sdl2-tutorial-2:main)
0: (SDL2-TUTORIAL-2:MAIN)
cwd: /test/cl-sdl2-tutorial/2,
dpd: /test/cl-sdl2-tutorial/2/,
e-p: /test/cl-sdl2-tutorial/2/hello_world.bmp,
pf: /test/cl-sdl2-tutorial/2/hello_world.bmp,
load: #<SDL-SURFACE {#X7F5CBC018DD0}>
Problem:
The bitmap can not be found and therefore not loaded.
Calls to (sdl2:load-bmp "hello_world.bmp") always return a a zero pointer (#<SDL-SURFACE {#X00000000}>) and breakpoint 3 states:
3 error: Couldn't open /home/jue/hello_world.bmp
but evaling (sdl2:load-bmp "hello_world.bmp") during a break from breakpoints 1 or 2 or 3, is successful and continuing (main) displays the picture.
Questions:
Why is sdl2:load-bmp using the "wrong" working directory and why is it using the "correct" working directory during breakpoints?
How to make sdl2:load-bmp use the wanted working directory (instead of "/home/jue/") when using relative paths?
Remarks
(I'm using current released versions of sbcl, Emacs, sly on a Linux machine, if that matters. I'm only intermediate experienced with Common Lisp and its development environment, but advanced at elisp)
I suspect but don't know that the problem is that the sdl2 library is doing fanciness with threads, with the result that the working directory isn't what you think.
The solution to this in my experience is never to let the implementation second-guess you like that. In any case where there's some interface which says "do something to a file" give it an absolute pathname so it has no chance to do any thinking of its own. Do something like.
(defparameter *where-my-bitmaps-live* (merge-pathnames
(pathname "lib/bitmaps/")
(user-homedir-pathname)))
...
(defun load-a-bitmap (name)
(load-bmp (merge-pathnames (pathname name) *where-my-bitmaps-live*)))
And now it really has no excuse.
(You want to check that the above pathname-mergery is actually right: it seems to be for me but I forget the details of pathname rules every time I look away for more than a few minutes).

Capture output of cl-async:spawn

I was hoping to experiment with cl-async to run a series of external programs with a large combinations of command line arguments. However, I can't figure out how to read the stdout of the processes launched with as:spawn.
I would typically use uiop which makes it easy to capture the process output:
(let ((p (uiop:launch-program ... :output :stream)))
(do-something-else-until-p-is-done)
(format t "~a~%" (read-line (uiop:process-info-output p))))
I've tried both :output :pipe and :output :stream options to as:spawn and executing (as:process-output process-object) in my exit-callback shows the appropriate pipe or async-stream objects but I can't figure out how to read from them.
Can anyone with experience with this library tell how to accomplish this?
So you go to your repl and type:
CL-USER> (documentation 'as:spawn 'function)
And you read whatever comes out (or put your point on the symbol and hit C-c C-d f). If you read it you’ll see that the format for the :input, etc arguments is either :pipe, (:pipe args...), :stream, or (:stream args...) (or some other options). And that :stream behaves similarly to :pipe but gives output of a different type and that for details of args one should look at PIPE-CONNECT so you go and look up the documentation for that. Well it tells you what the options are but it isn’t very useful. What’s the documentation/description of PIPE or STREAM? Well it turns out that pipe is a class and a subclass of STREAMISH. What about PROCESS that’s a class too and it has slots (and accessors) for things like PROCESS-OUTPUT. So what is a good plan for how to figure out what to do next? Here’s a suggestion:
Spawn a long running process (like cat foo.txt -) with :output :stream :input :pipe say
Inspect the result (C-c C-v TAB)
Hopefully it’s an instance of PROCESS. What is it’s output? Inspect that
Hopefully the output is a Gray stream (ASYNC-STREAM). Get it into your repl and see what happens if you try to read from it?
And what about the input? See what type that has and what you can do with it
The above is all speculation. I’ve not tried running any of this but you should. Alternatively go look at the source code for the library. It’s already on your computer and if you can’t find it it’s on GitHub. There are only about half a dozen source files and they’re all small. Just read them and see what you can learn. Or go to the symbol you want to know about and hit M-. to jump straight to its definition. Then read the code. Then see if you can figure out what to do.
I found the answer in the test suite. The output stream can only be processed asynchronously via a read call-back. The following is simple example for posterity
(as:start-event-loop
(lambda ()
(let ((bytes (make-array 0 :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8))))
(as:spawn "./test.sh" '()
:exit-cb (lambda (proc exit-status term-signal)
(declare (ignore proc exit-status term-signal))
(format t "proc output:~%~a"
(babel:octets-to-string bytes)))
:output (list :stream
:read-cb (lambda (pipe stream)
(declare (ignore pipe))
(let ((buf (make-array 128 :element-type '(unsigned-byte 8))))
(loop for n = (read-sequence buf stream)
while (plusp n) do
(setf bytes
(concatenate '(vector (unsigned-byte 8))
bytes
(subseq buf 0 n)))))))))))
with
$ cat test.sh
#!/bin/bash
sleep_time=$((1+$RANDOM%10))
echo "Process $$ will sleep for $sleep_time"
sleep $sleep_time
echo "Process $$ exiting"
yields the expected output

What is the function to exit the complete program in common lisp?

I have some function with loop, each iteration it reads input, on "0" it calls function "exit-and-save", in that function it saves some database and after that I need it to exit the program? What is the command for that? If I use return-from... it just returns from function, if I use return - error, if I use quit, it disconnects from slime. I'm new in common lisp...
(loop for i from 0 to 10
do (progn (format t "~&cycle ~d" i)
(when (> i 5)
(return nil))))
First of all I cannot verify that slime disconnects using (quit), at least not using sbcl at Ubuntu.
CL-USER> (quit)
; Evaluation aborted on NIL.
CL-USER>
"still able to input here"
But if you got some freakish version of slime you could take advantage of the condition system:
(define-condition end-program-condition (simple-error) ())
(defun some-func ()
(error 'end-program-condition))
(defun main-function ()
(handler-case (some-func)
(end-program-condition () "THE END")))
CL-USER> (main-function)
"THE END"
CL-USER> "still can input here"
"still can input here"
It depends on your common lisp implementation, but if using sbcl for example, you could call sb-ext:exit.
Source: http://www.sbcl.org/manual/#Exit

How to modify this code to support CCL?

It seems there is NO ANSI standard way to execute an external program and get its output as the following SBCL special code does:
(defmacro with-input-from-program ((stream program program-args environment)
&body body)
"Creates an new process of the specified by PROGRAM using
PROGRAM-ARGS as a list of the arguments to the program. Binds the
stream variable to an input stream from which the output of the
process can be read and executes body as an implicit progn."
#+sbcl
(let ((process (gensym)))
`(let ((,process (sb-ext::run-program ,program
,program-args
:output :stream
:environment ,environment
:wait nil)))
(when ,process
(unwind-protect
(let ((,stream (sb-ext:process-output ,process)))
,#body)
(sb-ext:process-wait ,process)
(sb-ext:process-close ,process))))))
The following CCL code reports "ERROR: value # is not of the expected type (AND CCL::BINARY-STREAM INPUT-STREAM)"
#+clozure
(let ((process (gensym)))
`(let ((,process (ccl:run-program "/bin/sh" (list "-c" (namestring ,program))
:input nil :output :stream :error :stream
:wait nil)))
(when ,process
(unwind-protect
(let ((,stream (ccl::external-process-output-stream ,process)))
,#body)
;(ccl:process-wait (ccl:process-whostate ,process) nil)
(close (ccl::external-process-output-stream ,process))
(close (ccl::external-process-error-stream ,process))))))
I know little CCL. I want to know how i can modify this code to support CCL ?
Any suggestion is appreciated !
Apparently trivial-shell:shell-command doesn't allow exactly what you want (it executes the external command synchronously and returns the whole output).
You could look into CCL's run-program. See:
run-program;
Does there exist standard way to run external program in Common Lisp? (this is a question that is similar to your question);
external-program (suggested in one of the answers in the question above) is supported by Quicklisp and it seems to have better support for executing external programs.
You should use trivial-shell.
Trivial shell is a simple platform independent interface to the underlying Operating System.

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