FIX.org, NEXT.md, DISCUSS.org, docs/DISCUSS.md and the session handoff at the
root are one TODO.org now: 293 entries under seven subsystem headings, each
carrying an org keyword that says where it stands. A DONE entry is a few lines
saying what was decided and what that rules out; the reasoning that would not
compress — the embedding spike and the four reports the hand-written x86
backend was built from — moved into docs/BUILT.md instead, and its entries
point there in one line.
Every entry was checked against the tree before it got a keyword, and the
prose was wrong in both directions. Things the deleted files called open were
built: the first-evaluation stall, main being redefinable, macro parameter
lists, the type-limit constants, the array constructors, the byte fills,
inc/dec, the discard's fontification, the Emacs buffers, rt_die's _exit, the
backtrace surface, and the acceptance failure that could print and still exit
zero. Things they called done were not: the backend reports' no-plan buckets
had gone stale in the other direction, the value-dependent defvar was
superseded rather than built, and macro-expansion source locations are on an
unmerged lane, so that entry is NEXT and names the branch.
Every comment that cited one of the five by name now cites a heading that
exists, in TODO.org or in docs/BUILT.md. The session reports under
docs/handoffs/ keep naming the files they worked on, because rewriting them
would falsify what those sessions did; each carries a note saying where the
content went.
The author: "I think I prefer length over len, because then I'll use len as
the variable name". One arm in check.ml, one row in the table beside it, and
every (len x) in lib, test, examples, vendor, spike, docs, web, emacs,
plan.org and NEXT.md rewritten.
Shadowing and builtin/ had already taken most of the sting out: a (defn len
...) was legal and won in its own file, and builtin/len reached past it. What
was left is that len was still a builtin — the defn earned a warning, and a
wrapper had to say builtin/ at every inner call. Now there is nothing under
the short name: len is an ordinary identifier in every position, which is
what (let [len (length xs)] ...) wants.
length takes over as shadowing's worked example rather than the feature
losing one. shadow-builtin.flan, builtin-qualified.flan, pkgs/shadowed and the
builtin/ rows in test_flan move to it and go on testing shadowing.
A call to a len nothing defines is answered where an unknown function is,
after every table and after the shadowing guard, so a program with its own len
never reaches it. The sentence is said rather than guessed at — len and length
are three edits apart and the did-you-mean's net is one — and the call is
written back out through spell_arg, as-slice's spelling lifted out of it and
now shared, so what is printed compiles.
sand.flan:33 still calls the old name and is the author's to change; until it
does, test_acceptance and test_session abort there. Both were run green
against a copy with that one line changed. FIX.org says so.
Decision 1. Odin's #load and #load_directory are the model, spelled as
ordinary named calls — an s-expression language already has a head
position and does not need Odin's `#`. (embed "p") is a [u8], (embed "p"
string) is a string, and (embed-dir "d") is a [n EmbedFile] sorted by
name.
Two spellings rather than one that changes type with its context. Odin
threads a type_hint everywhere and can afford it; with structural
equality and no implicit widening, the same text meaning two types here
would be a wart. The path is a literal and resolves relative to the file
the form is written in, both of which are Odin's rules and for Odin's
reasons: the bytes must be in hand before any value exists, and a
package's assets must not depend on where flan was invoked from.
The bytes reach the program as a [Str] node typed [u8], not as a [Bytes]
prim over a string. [Bytes] is identity — emit.ml lowers String and
Slice _ to the same %slice — and wrapping the literal in a prim would
make the node non-constant, so an (embed-dir) bound with defconst could
not be an LLVM constant. Both string emitters take the bytes and ignore
the node's type, so it is the same constant either way and one a global
can hold. emit.ml's escape is byte-exact, so a PNG survives the .ll.
The directory lookup is a linear scan in the prelude over a slice of
EmbedFile. A directory embed is tens of entries out of cache-warm
.rodata, and a compile-time perfect hash would be a build-time map with
its own failure modes that nothing has asked for. Sorted because readdir
order is filesystem-dependent and an unsorted embed would make two
builds of identical sources emit different .ll.
The slice points into .rodata, so a store through it segfaults at -O0
and is deleted at -O2 — the same measured trap the prelude's ASCII-case
note describes for (bytes "Hi"). Inherited, not widened; clone into a
Vec for a mutable copy.
