err-too-deep was the one error code nothing observed. The message is the least
of it: the plausible wrong version is `>` where the guard wants `>=`, which
writes one element past a [32 i32] and traps at exit 134 rather than answering
anything. 33 opening brackets is the input that separates them, and it is the
whole justification for a fixed array instead of a growable stack — the place
this lane pushes hardest against having no allocator.
`.5` reads as a float here and does not in EDN, where a number must start with
a digit and `.` is a legal symbol-start byte. That makes it a reinterpretation
of a token that is already legal as something else, which is exactly what the
house rule says to name rather than leave to be discovered, so it is written
beside the refusals.
Also: every symbol in the table was lowercase, so the A-Z half of alpha? was
unexercised and a version missing it passed. Enemy/Goblin in an existing dump
rather than a new case. And a line under "Internal helpers" saying the heading
is intent and not enforcement — a package has no visibility, so edn/scan-atom
is as callable as edn/next, the same way rl/get-color-raw is.
Both new cases verified by mutation: the depth guard traps, and alpha? without
its uppercase range fails Enemy/Goblin.
The type-directed half — (read-edn Enemy bytes), a parser emitted from a
compile-time walk over a struct — is the compiler's work and is not here.
What a running program can have today is the half underneath it, and the
shape of that half is decided entirely by there being no heap: a token is a
slice of the input, so reading a file costs one buffer and nothing else, and
the cost is a lifetime contract the types cannot state. It is stated in the
header instead, because a dangling [u8] is otherwise found from a corrupted
string several frames later.
A package and not the prelude. The prelude is prepended to every program and
everything in it is emitted, so a reader nobody imports would be a tax on
every build.
Token kinds are i32 constants rather than a defenum, which reads like a
downgrade and is not one: an Enum value cannot be compared with `=` (emit
fails) and a keyword is not a pattern (`match` refuses one), so a defenum here
is FFI-only and a caller could not branch on a kind at all. Both fixes live in
check.ml and emit.ml, which this lane does not touch.
Errors land on the cursor — a code and a byte offset — rather than in an
(Option Token). None says something went wrong; an editor needs to know where,
and a second out-parameter for the position is the same two fields with a
worse shape. A failed cursor is poisoned so a caller's while loop stops
instead of spinning. error-message turns a code into the sentence, and every
refusal gets its own: escapes, sets, tagged literals, #inst and #uuid
separately, metadata, ratios and characters each name themselves and say why,
so a file using one fails with what to remove rather than with a number.
Escapes are the refusal that had to be a refusal. Unescaping needs somewhere
to put the copy and there is nowhere; returning the raw bytes would hand back
a three-byte string as four, with a backslash in it, and nothing would say so.
Balance is checked in `next` against a fixed [32 i32] stack in the cursor,
because `[1 2}` is malformed in a way only the tokenizer has the position for,
and a growable stack is another thing there is no allocator for. Past 32 the
answer is err-too-deep rather than a closer that quietly went unchecked.
Symbol starts are a list and not "anything that is not a delimiter". Without
that, `@` and a backtick read as one-character symbols instead of being
reported; the ratio test is likewise digit-started only, so foo/bar stays a
namespaced symbol.
