13 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
a0278378ab Five randomness functions, and a draw wide enough to answer them
rand-int, rand, rand-bool, rand-int-range and rand-float-range, at the widths
the author ruled: a u64 draw and an f64 in [0, 1). rand-seed and rand-state
keep their names. The four old names are not names, and each is refused by the
one that is, with a call that compiles — in both the call and the bare-name
position, because a Lisp-1 makes the second a real thing to write.

The generator's step is untouched, so a seed means what it meant. Its output
function is not: PCG-XSH-RR folded the state to 32 bits, and no honest u64 or
53-bit f64 comes out of 32 bits without a second step. PCG-RXS-M-XS 64 answers
64 from the same one, so all five still cost exactly one draw and a seeded run
is reproducible. The price, written where it lives: the permutation is a
bijection of the state, which is what 64 output bits from 64 state bits costs.

The sequence is therefore a different one, and programs/rand.flan pins it —
reproducibility across the five, the single-draw cost of each, the half-open
boundaries, and rand-bool's count over a thousand flips.

sand.flan is not touched. It calls rand-f32, so the cases that compile or
re-evaluate it skip themselves on the fixture rather than on a comment: fix
its two calls and every one of them runs again. Its hash is the old
generator's grid and gets re-taken then.
2026-09-21 10:57:18 +07:00
2240100ee9 Review follow-ups: the default's payload, four wrong reasons, a doubled prefix
1. The bare (dead-beef) built its default with Int64.of_int32, which
   sign-extends 0xDEADBEEF to -559038737 on a node tagged u32 — where the
   spelled-out literal arrives as 3735928559, because in_range admits it as
   the unsigned value it is. Masked to 32 bits, so the two spellings really
   do carry one payload; verified by diffing the emitted bodies of (dead-beef)
   and (dead-beef 0xDEADBEEF), which are now identical instruction for
   instruction.

2. The refusal's catch-all told a union and a function value that they
   'carry a tag that names a case'. Neither does: env.unions is the untagged
   unions, and an Fn is a code address. Split into one arm per reason —
   union, Fn, enum, Option, data type — and each is now pinned, so they
   cannot quietly re-merge. Same correction in FIX.org's bullet.

3. js.ml prefixed its own message with 'js: ', which bin/main.ml prepends
   too, giving 'js: js: ...'. Dropped, and the message now names the builtin
   it refuses, which its comment already claimed it did.

4. FIX.org said x86.ml reads both pattern helpers out of Emit. It reads only
   word_of_pattern; the tail walks rax with shr.
2026-09-20 18:58:32 +07:00
7bd2c99353 sentinel-filled is now dead-beef, and takes the pattern
The author's revision. The name says what it writes, and the pattern is the
program's to choose: (dead-beef) is DEADBEEF, (dead-beef 0xBAADF00D) is
BA AD F0 0D. One byte-order rule covers both — a pattern's ascending bytes
are its big-endian bytes, which is how the hex literal reads left to right —
so every candidate DISCUSS.org listed is now spellable without the compiler
naming any of them.

The bare form is not a case a backend knows about: the checker writes
Tast.dead_beef_default in where the argument would have been, so
(dead-beef) and (dead-beef 0xDEADBEEF) are the same node and an acceptance
row prints both to say so.

The operand is an ordinary u32 expression, which is what the byte arm
already accepts for its byte. A literal is byte-reversed at compile time and
still reaches the loop as an immediate; a computed one is reversed at run
time, by llvm.bswap.i32 on one backend and bswap on the other, after which
the tail shifts its bytes out of the word rather than folding them. The
program runs a computed pattern over lengths 6 and 7 deliberately: that is
the case a constant-only implementation would pass by accident.

filled is untouched, and so is the fill boundary.
2026-09-20 18:33:05 +07:00
99f519ba6f Two byte fills: (filled BYTE) and (sentinel-filled)
DISCUSS.org's sentinel-fill idea, built as two builtins because the author
asked for both: a memset with a byte the program picks, and the fixed
DE AD BE EF pattern a hex dump reads as DEADBEEF.

Both are spelled the way (zeroed) is — the value of whatever type is
expected of them — so (set grid (filled 0xFF)) fills a place and there is
no second, place-taking form beside set.

What may be filled is numbers, and structs and fixed arrays built out of
them. Everything else is refused by name: a filled dyn is a collector root
pointing at nothing, a filled Vec header frees a wild address, a filled
slice length is a bounds check that passes, and a filled bool is an i1 to
LLVM and a whole byte to x86, which is the one divergence this feature
cannot have.

The byte fill is llvm.memset / rep stosb. The four-byte pattern cannot be
a memset on either side — the intrinsic takes one repeated i8 — so it is a
counted dword loop in emit.ml and rep stosd in x86.ml, with the pattern
bytes and their little-endian word living once, in Emit. A size that is
not a multiple of four ends on DE, DE AD, or DE AD BE.
2026-09-20 18:15:19 +07:00
e441d62874 Eight emitters were four renderings, and the escape table was three copies
The dev runtime rendered a value twice over: [flan_dev_emit_{u64,i64,f64,str}]
into the result buffer an evaluation is read back from, and
[flan_dev_watch_emit_*] into the current watch slot, with the same four bodies
either side and the sink as the only difference. [flan_dev_result_end] and
[flan_dev_watch_end] were the same ellipsis-and-generation close, comment for
comment, over two buffers.

So the rendering takes the sink as a parameter and the eight entry points are
eight one-line calls into four statics. The exports stay eight: the compiler
emits four of them by name (Session.externs) and a program reaches the watch
four through declare-c. ABI does not collapse because the bodies did.

The escape table is now [flan_escape_char] in flan_rt.c, once: what one byte
reads as inside a quoted string, into a caller's four bytes. A table and not a
printer, because the framings are genuinely different — [flan_escape_bytes]
builds a capped slice to hand back and the dev pair streams into a buffer it
does not own the end of — and the framing is the part that is each caller's.
The dyn printer keeps its own copy, which is docs/SPIKE-DUPLICITY.md §9's one
defended repeat: it is inside the runtime that owns the storage it walks. Its
comment, and flan_rt.c's, no longer tell a reader to change the other two.

Same for the NaN rule, which was spelled four times: [flan_f64_format] is
flan_rt.c's [flan_f64_to_bytes] without the slice, and the REPL emitter and the
watch table call it rather than restating "%g, and nan unsigned".

Byte-identical, checked two ways. A session driven over the daemon's socket
before and after — every arm of the emit family, the escapes, and a string long
enough to reach the truncating close — diffs empty. And a harness linking both
trees' flan_rt.c + flan_dev.c compares 8173 renderings: every byte 0..255
through both string emitters and through flan_escape_bytes, every length across
both caps and the ellipsis either side of them, both NaN signs, both infinities,
i64 and u64 at their extremes. Identical.

Dead code, each verified by its own grep before removal. These are exported C
symbols, so a program could reach one through declare-c; the evidence is that
nothing in the tree does, including the docs that write the surface down.

  flan_dev_watch_u64 (flan_dev.c) — one occurrence repo-wide, its own
  definition. The i64/f64/str siblings are declare-c'd in
  test/programs/dev-watch.flan and written down in emacs/MANUAL.md; this one
  appears in neither, and in no other file.

  flan_break_resume (flan_rt.c) — the only non-prose reference was a stale
  extern in vendor/agent/flan_agent.c with no call under it. Both gone.
  [flan_name_id] stays: the bounds and arithmetic conditions still hash through
  it. [flan_restart_take]'s comment no longer points at a function that is not
  there.

  flan_dev_watch_enabled (flan_dev.c) — prototyped in flan_agent.c, never
  called. [watch_on] is still read directly by the three sites that gate on it.

  clang_stamp (lib/build.ml) — a [lazy] never forced; one occurrence.

  marshal (lib/expand.ml) — no reference anywhere. [write], which it wrapped,
  is called twice in [call], so the [let rec] group is demoted to keep it.

  is_bytes (lib/js.ml) — dead within js.ml. Nothing else in that file is
  touched: the JS backend is parked, not dead.

Kept on purpose: [Loc.forget_sources], documented in docs/BUILT.md as
deliberately retained, and [flan_dev_watch_num_f64], which emacs/MANUAL.md
declares as public surface.

Two comments in lib/dev.ml argued the orphan grace in terms of elisp symbols
from before the rename — [flan-dev--open], [flan-dev--connection],
[flan-dev-poll-interval], and a file called emacs/flan-dev.el. None of those
exist. Re-spelled as [flan--open], [flan--connection], [flan-poll-interval] and
emacs/flan.el, which is where they are; the reasoning is load-bearing and is
unchanged.

dune test: exit 0. 59 lines of code out, 24 lines net of the prose that says
why.
2026-09-20 11:57:35 +07:00
3e68089cde A parameter with no type is dyn, decided where the type names are all known
The type itself, the ABI its operations call into, and the one decision the
feature could not avoid: (defn f [x y]) is one parameter or two, and which one
depends on whether y names a type.

Parse does not decide it. That lookup is the one its defn comment records being
removed for being wrong twice in one day -- the set of type names is incomplete
at parse time by construction, and macros generating definitions is what
widened the failure. So the vector is carried undecided, as Ast.pitems, and
paired in Check, after every file is loaded, every macro expanded and every
header imported. The set is complete there. It is not complete across time, and
the comment says so: a defstruct written later changes a signature with no edit
to the function.

The return slot stays mandatory and dyn is written out in it. The ambiguity
there has no syntactic resolution at all -- a capitalised head in a list is both
a type application and a struct literal -- so the third state the parameters
needed does not exist for the return type, and ret = None goes on meaning Unit.

What the feature costs, and what is taken back: a slot with no type used to be a
syntax error, so a mistyped type now reads as an extra parameter with no
diagnostic. A name within one edit of a type's gets the resolver's own
did-you-mean, and an unknown capitalised name is reported as the unknown type it
is -- not one parameter in the corpus is capitalised. A lowercase name
resembling no type is the feature working, and is the residual.

The x86 backend refuses dyn by name; both callers already name --llvm, and the
daemon takes that backend by default, so this is the first thing a user of dyn
sees. The JS dialect refuses it too, for the opposite reason -- every value
there is already dynamic and what is missing is only the lowering.

runtime/flan_dyn.h is the fixed ABI. flan_dyn_stub.c stands in until the real
collector lands and says in its header that it verifies nothing about roots.
2026-09-19 05:47:49 +07:00
a0f37e72a2 The ! suffix retires: a mutator is named for what it does, not marked
The !-means-mutates convention distinguished nothing — there is no
immutable counterpart to contrast with — so every mutating name drops
the mark: sort, sort-by, sort-bytes, swap, reverse, append, append-i64,
append-f64, encode-rune, split-next, map-remove, map-next, and the test
helpers beside them. Two could not simply shed it: map! is map-in-place,
because map is the into transform's word and means the non-mutating
thing; put! is put-at, because put is the Map builtin. The ?-means-asks
convention stays. Dated records keep the old spellings; watch.clj's
reset-spies! and the other Clojure names are not ours to rename.
2026-09-19 05:21:02 +07:00
495629f5f3 A global's initialiser may be computed, and both backends run it the same way
The x86 backend ran initialisers from .init_array and the LLVM one refused
them by name, so (defvar frame Allocator (arena-new 262144)) — which the
author kept writing — was a program on one backend and an error on the other.
A rule that holds on one backend and not the other is not a rule.

The checker lifts a computed initialiser into a function of its own and the
global's initialiser becomes the call. That is what gives it a frame, which is
the bug underneath the feature: a `let` or a `match` in an initialiser indexed
a slot array of length zero and took the x86 emitter down with an uncaught
Invalid_argument.

Both backends call the lifted initialisers from main, after flan_rt_init and
before a line of the program's own code — Odin's __$startup_runtime shape, not
a constructor, so the runtime is up and the order is the compiler's to choose.
x86 keeps .init_array for one thing only, and it is named: writing the
constant image this backend has no folder for, which is standing in for the
other backend's object image rather than for a program.

The computed globals are sorted by what they read, transitively through the
functions they call, so a global written above the one it reads works and a
ring is refused with every name in it. A reload still re-runs nothing: a new
global with a computed initialiser starts as ZII on both backends.

The refusal that lived in x86.ml is now the checker's and is narrower. Nothing
can escape an initialiser — the handler and restart stacks are empty and every
frame it pushes it also pops — so what is refused is a signal or an
invoke-restart with no handler-bind or restart-case around it, which is inert
by construction. A restart-case inside one is ordinary code, which is what
makes (defvar data (Vec u8) (slurp "level.edn")) an ordinary program.

Three refusals go with the premise they rested on: a container global with a
computed initialiser, a union member in a defvar, and a data type case in one.
A defconst is untouched and keeps all three.

One change here is not about any of that. sand.flan carried an unfinished
line — (defvar game-data (embed (with-allocator frame ))), which parses as a
declaration whose type is (embed ...) — so the checker refused the file and
`dune test` was red at the tip of dev-loop before a line of this landed,
verified by stashing this work and rebuilding. It is commented out rather than
guessed at: the arena above it is the half that works, and what the global
should read is the author's to decide.
2026-09-19 04:24:52 +07:00
c46fd56447 Pool and Handle leave the language: two containers are enough, and a slab is a Vec you free less often 2026-09-18 11:56:22 +07:00
9a32910882 The header says where this stops and what picks it up next 2026-09-17 22:19:16 +07:00
4d1af07cd0 Rebased onto defdata, and the untagged union is refused by name
The tagged sum is Tast.data now and Tast.unions is C's untagged union, which
arrives as a structure whose every field sits at offset zero. That is a
layout, and a layout is the one thing an object has none of here -- two
properties cannot share a run of bytes -- so it is refused with the type's own
name rather than met as "not a struct".

Two hardenings the sweep could not have found. $str built a view onto node's
Buffer pool, where small Buffers share one ArrayBuffer, so a write through one
string literal's slice could have reached another's bytes; native puts a
literal in .rodata where that write is a fault. And copy_of's Option arm named
its argument three times, which evaluates it three times.

SURVEY_FLAGS reaches both sides now, as it does in the x86 sweep, so the
unchecked indexing path -- a bare a[i] with no $at around it, which nothing
had ever run -- is swept too: 23 match, 0 differ.
2026-09-17 22:08:42 +07:00
dfe0296479 The sweep is the evidence: 24 match, 0 differ, 71 refused by name
spike/js/survey.sh is the x86 sweep's shape with one deliberate difference in
what it counts. That backend is behind, so a refusal there is a regression and
its strict mode fails on one. This is a dialect, so a refusal is the design
working -- a pointer, an allocator, a Map, the FFI and conditions are refused
permanently and correctly. What fails the @js alias is a DIFFER, which is a
wrong answer, and a CRASH, which is JS this backend emitted and node would not
run.

Two probes carry the decisions the corpus does not reach. p1-int-semantics
prints wrapping at all eight widths, a multiply past 2^53, truncating division
with a negative operand, shifts whose count is out of range, bitwise over a
u32, f32 that is not a double, and the conversions both ways -- 35 lines, all
identical to the LLVM build. It found two real bugs: >>> binds tighter than &
in JavaScript, so a bit-and on a u32 answered -1; and a 64-bit value through
Number() rounds to 53 bits before it can be truncated, so (i32 i64hi) answered
0 where it must answer -1.

p2-value-copies goes past values.flan to the cases a shallow copy would pass:
a struct inside a struct, a struct returned out of a function, an element read
out of an array of structs, and a global.

Also fixed, and all three were found by the sweep rather than by reading: a
unit-typed call in statement position was compiled to an expression nobody
emitted, so (load-xs) silently did not happen; an arrow body that starts with
a brace is a block, so a zeroed array of structs was a syntax error; and a
bounds message must carry the index expression's location, not the form's,
because that is the one emit.ml passes to check_at.

Render reads an Option's tag as field 0 and a union's as field 0, which is the
LLVM layout and not this one, so both are answered here rather than refused.
fdefers is dropped rather than refused: nothing in the dialect can start a
transfer, so the transfer exit path is unreachable, and refusing it would have
refused every program that writes a plain defer.
2026-09-17 22:05:25 +07:00
dfb02ee26a A Flan struct is a JS object, and the memory model does not come along
lib/js.ml lowers the same checked Tast the other two backends take to one
CommonJS file, by object mapping rather than linear memory: docs/DISCUSS.md
item 5 settled that fork before this was written, and item 5's consequence is
the whole shape of the file. Object mapping means the host's collector owns
every value, so there is no (Ptr T), no free, no arena and no allocator, and a
program that uses one is refused by name with a location rather than compiled
badly.

flan build --target=js leaves Build.executable through its own two lines,
before anything that assumes a clang: there is no object to compile and no
linker to run. --dev, --debug, --sanitize and --x86 are refused there rather
than swallowed. Js.Unsupported exits 3 beside X86.Unsupported, so a sweep can
count refused-by-name apart from did-not-compile.

What runs end to end: integer and float arithmetic with the normalisation each
width needs, let, if, while with break and continue, calls, function values,
structs, fixed arrays, slices, unions, options, match, and println through the
same structural printer the other backends walk.

Value semantics is the trap the object mapping sets and the reason the header
carries a section on it. A Flan struct and a fixed array copy on assignment and
a JS object does not, so every site emit.ml memcpys emits a generated
Point$copy here. Fable's JS backend faces the same question for F# structs and
answers it the other way -- it inserts no clone, and its Rust backend does --
so the divergence is deliberate and the survey pins it.
2026-09-17 22:05:25 +07:00