Zsh: append an element a dynamically-named associative array - zsh

I have several associative arrays,
typeset -A first
typeset -A second
# …
and want to add an element (e.g. [a]=b) to one of them, but cannot find the right syntax. Started at
if something; then
arr=first
else
arr=second
fi
$arr[a]+=b # bad
$arr+=([a]=b) # bad
and have tried many mixes of quotation marks, braces, various subscripts and parameter expansion flags, arr=$first/arr=$second, etc. Everything I've tried is an error. Can it be done?

I don't think this is ideal but it should get the job done.
export "${arr}[a]"=b

This should also work in many cases:
eval "${arr}[a]=b"
eval has a bad reputation (often deservedly so), but with simple substitutions like those being used here, it should be fine.

Related

How to process latex commands in R?

I work with knitr() and I wish to transform inline Latex commands like "\label" and "\ref", depending on the output target (Latex or HTML).
In order to do that, I need to (programmatically) generate valid R strings that correctly represent the backslash: for example "\label" should become "\\label". The goal would be to replace all backslashes in a text fragment with double-backslashes.
but it seems that I cannot even read these strings, let alone process them: if I define:
okstr <- function(str) "do something"
then when I call
okstr("\label")
I directly get an error "unrecognized escape sequence"
(of course, as \l is faultly)
So my question is : does anybody know a way to read strings (in R), without using the escaping mechanism ?
Yes, I know I could do it manually, but that's the point: I need to do it programmatically.
There are many questions that are close to this one, and I have spent some time browsing, but I have found none that yields a workable solution for this.
Best regards.
Inside R code, you need to adhere to R’s syntactic conventions. And since \ in strings is used as an escape character, it needs to form a valid escape sequence (and \l isn’t a valid escape sequence in R).
There is simply no way around this.
But if you are reading the string from elsewhere, e.g. using readLines, scan or any of the other file reading functions, you are already getting the correct string, and no handling is necessary.
Alternatively, if you absolutely want to write LaTeX-like commands in literal strings inside R, just use a different character for \; for instance, +. Just make sure that your function correctly handles it everywhere, and that you keep a way of getting a literal + back. Here’s a suggestion:
okstr("+label{1 ++ 2}")
The implementation of okstr then needs to replace single + by \, and double ++ by + (making the above result in \label{1 + 2}). But consider in which order this needs to happen, and how you’d like to treat more complex cases; for instance, what should the following yield: okstr("1 +++label")?

Multiline prompt formatting incorrectly due to date command in zsh

I have the following in my .zshrc:
setopt PROMPT_SUBST
precmd(){
echo""
LEFT="$fg[cyan]$USERNAME#$HOST $fg[green]$PWD"
RIGHT="$fg[yellow]$(date +%I:%M\ %P)"
RIGHTWIDTH=$(($COLUMNS-${#LEFT}))
echo $LEFT${(l:$RIGHTWIDTH:)RIGHT}
}
PROMPT="$ "
This gives me the following screenshot
The time part on the right is always not going all the way to the edge of the terminal, even when resized. I think this is due to the $(date +%I:%M\ %P) Anyone know how to fix this?
EDIT: Zoomed in screenshot
While your idea is commendable, the problem you suffer from is that your LEFT and RIGHT contains ANSI escape sequences (for colors), which should be zero-width characters, but are nevertheless counted toward the length of a string if you naively use $#name, or ${(l:expr:)name}.
Also, as a matter of style, you're better off using Zsh's builtin prompt expansion, which wraps a lot of common things people may want to see in their prompts in short percent escape sequences. In particular, there are builtin sequences for colors, so you don't need to rely on nonstandard $fg[blah].
Below is an approximate of your prompt written in my preferred coding style... Not exactly, I made everything super verbose so as to be understandable (hopefully). The lengths of left and right preprompts are calculated after stripping the escape sequences for colors and performing prompt expansion, which gives the correct display length (I can't possibly whip that up in minutes; I ripped the expression off pure).
precmd(){
local preprompt_left="%F{cyan}%n#%m %F{green}%~"
local preprompt_right="%F{yellow}%D{%I:%M %p}%f"
local preprompt_left_length=${#${(S%%)preprompt_left//(\%([KF1]|)\{*\}|\%[Bbkf])}}
local preprompt_right_length=${#${(S%%)preprompt_right//(\%([KF1]|)\{*\}|\%[Bbkf])}}
local num_filler_spaces=$((COLUMNS - preprompt_left_length - preprompt_right_length))
print -Pr $'\n'"$preprompt_left${(l:$num_filler_spaces:)}$preprompt_right"
}
PROMPT="$ "
Edit: In some terminal emulators, printing exactly $COLUMN characters might wrap the line. In that case, replace the appropriate line with
local num_filler_spaces=$((COLUMNS - preprompt_left_length - preprompt_right_length - 1))
End of edit.
This is very customizable, because you can put almost anything in preprompt_left and preprompt_right and still get the correct lengths — just remember to use prompt escape sequence for zero width sequences, e.g., %F{}%f for colors, %B%b for bold, etc. Again, read the docs on prompt expansion: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Prompt-Expansion.html.
Note: You might notice that %D{%I:%M %p} expands to things like 11:35 PM. That's because I would like to use %P to get pm, but not every implementation of strftime supports %P. Worst case scenario: if you really want lowercase but %P is not supported, use your original command subsitution $(date +'%I:%M %P').
Also, I'm using %~ instead of %/, so you'll get ~/Desktop instead of /c/Users/johndoe/Desktop. Some like it, some don't. However, as I said, this is easily customizable.

ZSH prompt substitution issues

I've searched through several answers here and through Google, but I'm still not sure what's going wrong with my prompt.
According to the documentation I've read, this should work
setopt prompt_subst
autoload -U colors && colors
PROMPT="%{[00m[38;5;245m%}test %D%{[00m%}"
My prompt is the following, however:
[00m[38;5;245mtest 15-07-01[00m
Note that the date expansion actually worked, so prompt substitution is working. The ZSH man pages for prompt expansion states that %{...%} should be treated as a raw escape code, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Passing that string to print -P also results in the output above. I've found example prompts on the Internet for ZSH that also seem to indicate that the above syntax should work. See this for one example - the $FG and $FX arrays are populated with escape codes and are defined here. I've tried this example directly by merging both the files above, adding setopt prompt_subst to the beginning just to make sure it's set, then sourcing it and the prompt is a mess of escape codes.
The following works
setopt prompt_subst
autoload -U colors && colors
PROMPT=$'%{\e[00m\e[38;5;245m%}test %D%{\e[00m%}'
I get the expected result of test 15-07-01 in the proper color.
I've tested this on ZSH 5.0.5 in OSX Yosimite, 5.0.7 from MacPorts, and 4.3.17 on Debian, with the same results. I know I have provided a valid solution to my own problem here with the working example, but I'm wondering why the first syntax isn't working as it seems it should.
I think this all has to do with the timeless and perennial problem of escaping. It's worth reminding ourselves what escaping means, briefly: an escape character is an indicator to the computer that what follows should not be output literally.
So there are 2 escaping issues with:
PROMPT="%{[00m[38;5;245m%}test %D%{[00m%}"
Firstly, the colour escape sequences (eg; [00m) should all start with the control character like so \e[00m. You may have also seen it written as ^[00m and \003[00m. What I suspect has happened is one of the variations has suffered the common fate of being inadvertently escaped by either the copy/paste of the author or the website's framework stack, whether that be somewhere in a database, HTTP rendering or JS parsing. The control character (ie, ^, \e or \003), as you probably know, does not have a literal representation, say if you press it on the keyboard. That's why a web stack might decide to not display anything if it sees it in a string. So let's correct that now:
PROMPT="%{\e[00m\e[38;5;245m%}test %D%{\e[00m%}"
This actually nicely segues into the next escaping issue. Somewhat comically \e[ is actually a representation of ESC, it is therefore in itself an escape sequence marker that, yes, is in turn escaped by \. It's a riff on the old \\\\\\\\\\ sort of joke. Now, significantly, we must be clear on the difference between the escape expressions for the terminal and the string substitutions of the prompt, in pseudo code:
PROMPT="%{terminal colour stuff%}test %D%{terminal colour stuff%}"
Now what I suspect is happening, though I can't find any documentation to prove it, is that once ZSH has done its substitutions, or indeed during the substitution process, all literal characters, regardless of escape significations, are promoted to real characters¹. To yet further the farce, this promotion is likely done by escaping all the escape characters. For example if you actually want to print '\e' on the command line, you have to do echo "\\\e". So to overcome this issue, we just need to make sure the 'terminal colour stuff' escape sequences get evaluated before being assigned to PROMPT and that can be done simply with the $'' pattern, like so:
PROMPT=$'%{\e[00m\e[38;5;245m%}test %D%{\e[00m%}'
Note that $'' is of the same ilk as $() and ${}, except that its only function is to interpret escape sequences.
[1] My suspicion for this is based on the fact that you can actually do something like the following:
PROMPT='$(date)'
where $(date) serves the same purpose as %D, by printing a live version of the date for every new prompt output to the screen. What this specific examples serves to demonstrate is that the PROMPT variable should really be thought of as storage for a mini script, not a string (though admittedly there is overlap between the 2 concepts and thus stems confusion). Therefore, as a script, the string is first evaluated and then printed. I haven't looked at ZSH's prompt rendering code, but I assume such evaluation would benefit from native use of escape sequences. For example what if you wanted to pass an escape sequence as an argument to a command (a command that gets run for every prompt render) in the prompt? For example the following is functionally identical to the prompt discussed above:
PROMPT='%{$(print "\e[00m\e[38;5;245m")%}test $(date)%{$(print "\e[00m")%}'
The escape sequences are stored literally and only interpreted at the moment of each prompt rendering.

zsh: command substitution, proper quoting and backslash (again)

(Note: This is a successor question to my posting zsh: Command substitution and proper quoting , but now with an additional complication).
I have a function _iwpath_helper, which outputs to stdout a path, which possibly contains spaces. For the sake of this discussion, let's assume that _iwpath_helper always returns a constant text, for instance
function _iwpath_helper
{
echo "home/rovf/my directory with spaces"
}
I also have a function quote_stripped expects one parameter and if this parameter is surrounded by quotes, it removes them and returns the remaining text. If the parameter is not surrounded by quotes, it returns it unchanged. Here is its definition:
function quote_stripped
{
echo ${1//[\"\']/}
}
Now I combine both functions in the following way:
target=$(quote_stripped "${(q)$(_iwpath_helper)}")
(Of course, 'quote_stripped' would be unnecessary in this toy example, because _iwpath_helper doesn't return a quote-delimited path here, but in the real application, it sometimes does).
The problem now is that the variable target contains a real backslash character, i.e. if I do a
echo +++$target+++
I see
+++home/rovf/my\ directory\ with\ spaces
and if I try to
cd $target
I get on my system the error message, that the directory
home/rovf/my/ directory/ with/ spaces
would not exist.
(In case you are wondering where the forward slashes come from: I'm running on Cygwin, and I guess that the cd command just interprets backslashes as forward slashes in this case, to accomodate better for the Windows environment).
I guess the backslashes, which physically appear in the variable target are caused by the (q) expansion flag which I apply to $(_iwpath_helper). My problem is now that I can not simply drop the (q), because without it, the function quote_stripped would get on parameter $1 only the first part of the string, up to the first space (/home/rovf/my).
How can I write this correctly?
I think you just want to avoid trying to strip quotes manually, and use the (Q) expansion flag. Compare:
% v="a b c d"
% echo "$v"
a b c d
% echo "${(q)v}"
a\ b\ c\ d
% echo "${(Q)${(q)v}}"
a b c d
chepner was right: The way I tried to unquote the string was silly (I was thinking too much in a "Bourne Shell way"), and I should have used the (Q) flag.
Here is my solution:
target="${(Q)$(_iwpath_helper)}"
No need for the quote_stripped function anymore....

Escaping characters for text mode in AUCTeX [duplicate]

When editing an Sweave document in LaTeX (using the Noweb mode), Emacs knows to "ignore" code that is in <<>>= blocks. However, for interstitial \Sexpr{} blocks, this isn't the case. Given that R references by columns via '$' and LaTeX uses $ to set-off equations, these \Sexpr{} blocks often break the syntax highlighting, like so:
I have a very rudimentary understanding the elisp & Emacs syntax highlighting, but my hope is that it might be possible to add something to .emacs that will disable any parsing/$ detection within \Sexpr{}'s.
I thought emacs with ESS has correct syntax highlighting for Sweave?
Anyway, the easiest "fix" is to just not use the $ operator but [[ instead. For example:
foo$p.value
foo[['p.value']]
Should give the same result. I think foo$p.value is just short for foo[["p.value",exact=FALSE]]
I don't have a fix either, but I'll pass along my workaround, which is to never (well, rarely) do any processing in \Sexpr chunks but instead to store things I want to use in \Sexpr in variables, and to do so in the same chunk I do the main calculations in.
<<echo=FALSE, results=hide>>=
t1 <- chisq.test(someVar)
p1 <- formatC(t1$p.value, format="%f", digits=2)
#
\dots with a $p$-value of \Sexpr{p1}.
While there are some downsides to this, I find it helps me to better keep track of what I want to present, and how I want to present it.
As an aside, consider using formatC instead of round as it can keep significant zeros (ie, 0.10 instead of 0.1).
I have no good answer for you as I am not an Emacs hacker, so I usually do one of two things:
Either add a simple % $ comment at the of the line to "close" the math expression from $ to $,
Or rewrite the expression to not use $-based subsetting:
round(as.numeric(chisq.test(someVar)["p.value"]), 2).

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