The new gg format is based on a BNF file which can be found in the `gg`
directory. The code for decoding `.gg` files has been refactored to
mirror that file. The result is more resilient parsing, better errors,
and a greater ability to extend the format in the future.
The new decoder is notable in that it does not use a lexer. Both lexing
and parsing are done in a single step.
The format syntax itself has also been modified. Rather than using
semi-colons everywhere, commas are used as separators in tuples.
Additionally the final comma/semi-colon is no longer required.
This commit is the result of many days of picking vm apart and putting
it back together again. The result is an implementation which separates
compile and runtime into separate steps, and which functions (more)
correctly in the face of recursion.
Pretty much all aspects of vm have been modified or deleted, so it's not
even really worth it to describe specific changes. Just pretend this is
the original implementaiton and the old one was never done.
Getting `recur` to work required adding an Operation argument to a bunch
of places in a really hacky way. I don't like it at all, but I'm also
kind of out of mental energy to figure it out properly. The fibonacci
demo in the README _works_, at least, though I don't think it's actually
tail recursive.
This change required OpenEdges to be passed around as pointers, which in
turn required me to audit how value copying is being done everywhere and
simplify it in a few places. I think I covered all the bases.
The new internals of Graph allow the graph's actual structure to be
reflected within the graph itself. For example, if the OpenEdges of two
ValueIns are equivalent then the same OpenEdge pointer is shared for the
two internally. This applies recursively, so if two OpenEdge tuples
share an inner OpenEdge, they will share the same pointer.
This change is a preliminary requirement for creating a graph mapping
operation. Without OpenEdge deduplication the map operation would end up
operating on the same OpenEdge multiple times, which would be incorrect.
It was an interesting idea, but now that an actual text-based syntax is
worked out and definitely going to be used gim is just making tests
fail for no gain. It can be resurrected from the git history in the
future, if needed.
The base graph implementation has been moved into its own package,
`graph`, and been made fully generic, ie the value on each vertex/edge
is a parameterized type. This will allow us to use the graph for both
syntax parsing (gg) and runtime evaluation (vm), with each use-case
being able to use slightly different Value types.
The vm does what it needs to do (evaluate the result of passing an input
to an operatio, where the input and the operation themselves may have
sub-inputs/operations to evaluate), with many caveats/misgivings.
Three new methods, EdgeValue, FromValue, and FromTuple, have been added
to OpenEdge in order to allow future users of the gg package to traverse
the graph.
The decoder basically works, though there's some quirks in the design
I'll need to marinate one. For example, you can't have a tuple as an
edge value. This is probably fine?
Stringification of Graphs was added to aid in debugging the decoder, the
format it outputs is not the final one. Most likely the (future) encoder
will be used for that purpose.
The decoder is not implemented in the nicest way; it fully reads in the
LexerTokens first, and then processes. This made trying to wrap my head
around the problem a lot easier because it left fewer failure cases, but
it's not the most efficient thing to do.
Now that v0 is done it's pretty plain to see that the decoder could work
by only reading in the next N tokens that it needs at a time. But that
will be left for a future version.
An empty `Value` is now valid.
It is now possibly to change the edgeVal of an OpenEdge. It feels like
this shouldn't be necessary, but it greatly simplifies the decoding
logic to have this.
A tuple which is created with just one input edge, and with no edge
value of its own, is now automatically simplified to just that input
edge.
For MVP newlines aren't going to be used as a syntax terminator, they're
just going to be whitespace. Otherwise the decoding logic gets way more
complicated.
`gg.Graph` has been reworked in its internal functionality, to more
closely match the capability of a purely stack-based implementation. The
current implementation is _very_ inefficient, however. Tests have been
deliberately left pretty sparse, as I expect the internals to continue
to change significantly.
Brian Picciano
Brian Picciano