The mechanical half, ahead of the parser change that needs it. tools/unit-return.py
fills the empty slot with () and rewrites Unit as () wherever a type is spelled --
(Fn [i32] Unit), (Map i32 Unit), a return type written out.
Deciding whether a defn already had a return type is the whole difficulty, and
the script does it the way parse.ml did: is_type_form is transcribed rather than
improved, because being identical to the parser it replaces is what makes the
sweep meaning-preserving. It is re-runnable, so the lanes that branched before
this can have the same pass at merge:
python3 tools/unit-return.py .
python3 tools/unit-return.py --in-strings test/test_flan.ml test/test_acceptance.ml \
test/test_session.ml emacs/test-flan-dev.el emacs/test-flan-mode.el
python3 tools/unit-return.py --raw-ml lib/prelude.ml
python3 tools/unit-return.py --in-html web/index.html
-v logs every defn it saw and what it decided, which is how a sweep of 440 sites
gets reviewed at all. Embedded modes pool a file's type declarations across all
its fragments, because a snippet split across concatenation -- decls ^ "(defn f
[s [u8]] Cursor ...)" -- cannot see the names the other half declared; pooled
names count only in bare-symbol position, for the same reason the prelude's do.
A fragment that cuts off mid-form is skipped rather than guessed at. Five sites
in test_flan.ml still needed a hand, and they are in this commit.
Two things ride along because the sweep needs them: parse.ml reads a lone () as
the return type of a function with no body, which was not a shape the old
optional slot could produce; and the map refusals name () rather than Unit, since
that is now the spelling a caller wrote.
The script is in tools/ rather than thrown away, because two lanes are
writing Flan in the old spelling right now and their files need the same
pass at merge.
It works on forms, not on text: a keyword becomes a dot only where it sits
in a field-label position inside a brace, so an enum member in value
position, a map key inside an EDN string and a type-position {K V} are all
left alone. :keys keeps its colon -- it names no field.
(string b) is the mirror of (bytes s) and costs nothing: emit.ml already
lowers Types.String and Types.Slice _ to the same %slice, 16 bytes at
align 8, so a string and a [u8] are the identical value at run time and
both directions emit as the argument itself. What changes is only what
the checker will let the value be passed to — which was the whole gap.
Two decisions, both written into check.ml's comment.
It does not check UTF-8, because `string` does not claim UTF-8. The
prelude settles it: valid-utf8? is an ordinary function you call when you
care, decode-rune / rune-at / rune-count all take [u8] and not string,
and decode-rune answers {:ok false :width 1} on a malformed byte rather
than assuming well-formed input. The one place the runtime treats a
string differently from a byte slice is flan_escape_bytes, for a string
nested in a printed structure, and that is a byte-wise escape table with
no decoding in it. A check here would be the only enforcement point in
the language, which is a claim the rest of it does not make.
It does not widen the literal-write hole. That hole is the other
direction — (bytes "Hi") hands back a writable-looking slice over
constant data — and this direction only loses the ability to write, so
the result reaches strictly fewer stores than its argument could.
Provenance is still what the other direction needs; nothing here waits
on it.
The one sharp edge is not new but is easier to trip over now, and is
recorded in both the checker and digits.flan: i64->bytes, f64->bytes and
u64->bytes all view the same static buffer in the runtime, overwritten
by the next call, and calling it a string does not copy it. Format, draw,
then format the next one.
examples/digits.flan keeps its three signatures and loses its middle: the
[10 string] table, the per-glyph pen and the digit arithmetic are gone,
and draw-int is one draw-text. What survives is the part (string ...)
does not answer — i64->bytes has no field width, so "%03i" is still
assembled, and f64->bytes is "%g", so fixed decimal places are still a
split into two integers. core-input-multitouch and
core-input-virtual-controls ignored the width they were given, so both
inline the draw and stop importing digits.flan entirely.
test/programs/string-of-bytes.flan at -O2 and -O0: a number round-tripped,
an empty slice, sub-views whose length is not the underlying storage's,
and the result across a declare-c boundary. The last is the one that
could have been wrong — "hello world" cut to five bytes has a space where
C wants a NUL, so a shim that trusted the bytes would print all eleven.
The first ten of raylib's core list, ported. Seven new bindings and the
named colour palette; nothing else was added, because a binding called
by nothing is the same as not having bound it.
The gaps they found are the point. No number reaches draw-text: i64->bytes
answers [u8], draw-text wants a string, and nothing bridges — five of the
ten wanted TextFormat and got a glyph table instead. And an enum parameter
cannot be driven by a loop variable: the index is an i32, the parameter is
an enum, neither converts, and a second declare-c with an i32 face is
refused because one C function gets one binding. Two correct rules that
compose into a wall.
None of the gaps expected blocked anything: no generics, no allocator, no
Vec, no escaping closure, no block-scoped defer. These are input-and-draw
programs over fixed-size state, which is the shape the language has.
