[erlang-questions] The Core Erlang AST via cerl.erl and Sequence returns from functions

[Eric B Merritt]

Richard,

 Thanks, Its good to know that its not me misunderstanding things. I
will see if I can dig into the compiler here in the next couple of days
and submit a patch to the patches list.

Eric

On Wed, 2011-12-21 at 21:45 +0100, Richard Carlsson wrote:
> On 2011-12-21 17:36, Eric Merritt wrote:
> > Guys,
> >
> > I am currently targeting the Erlang VM for a custom language via core
> > erlang as defined in cerl.erl on R15B. I have run into an interesting
> > issue. In a Let form (cerl:c_let) if I have a sequence of c_vars on
> > the Variable arguement and c_apply (on a function that returns a
> > c_values) in the Argument argument then the erlang compiler exits with
> > an 'error'. However, if I have a c_values directly as the Argument
> > argument the compiler will compile the form. Either I am understanding
> > something incorrectly or this is a bug in the cerl compiler. I am
> > hoping one of the folks that is knowledgeable on the subject can help
> > out. In short the following works:
> >
> >      cerl:c_let([cerl:c_var(x0), cerl:c_var(x1)],
> > cerl:c_values([cerl:c_int(0), cerl:c_int(1)]), cerl:c_atom(foo))
> >
> > while this does not:
> >
> >      <define a function that returns cerl:c_values([cerl:c_int(0),
> > cerl:c_int(1)])>
> >
> >      cerl:c_let([cerl:c_var(x0), cerl:c_var(x1)],
> > cerl:c_apply(cerl:c_fname(my_fun, 0), []), cerl:c_atom(foo)).
> 
> Intuitively (and without consulting the source code or my old papers on 
> Core Erlang), I'd say that the latter should work. However, the OTP 
> compiler doesn't try to be complete with respect to all possible Core 
> Erlang programs - it only bothers to implement what's needed to handle 
> code that's first been translated from (full) Erlang. So if you start 
> generating arbitrary but legal Core Erlang, you may run into corner 
> cases (in this case, it seems that multiple return values aren't handled 
> as they ought to be). See if you can find the problem in the compiler - 
> as Calvin's dad used to say, "it builds character". :-)
> 
>      /Richard
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