[erlang-questions] -spec tuple variable size

[Siraaj Khandkar]

Hmmm, IDK, that just seems wrong to me. If what you're offering clients is a
variable number of elements, then, semantically, you're offering them a list.
If a client wants to optimize lookups, it should be left up to the client app
to convert it to a tuple.

If you think about it, you're asking for a static guarantee for something that
is only known at runtime, which is not possible.

Alternatively, I guess you can write a template that expands to 4096 elements :)


On Nov 29, 2012, at 11:08 AM, Dmitry Kolesnikov <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> Yes, you are right that tuples are converted into list during the serialisation process. You cannot avoid it but api offered to client uses tuples. 
> 
> - Dmitry
> 
> On Nov 29, 2012, at 6:03 PM, Siraaj Khandkar <siraaj@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
>> I don't know all the technicalities of Erlang's type specs, but in general -
>> variable growth is antithetical to the concept of a tuple.
>> 
>> You'll still need to accumulate the elements in some list before you convert
>> it to a tuple, so why not just spec that list?
>> 
>> 
>> On Nov 28, 2012, at 5:10 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> Thanks for response!
>>> Let me explain better what I am trying to achieve.
>>> "The shorthand [T,...] stands for the set of non-empty proper lists whose elements are of type T." 
>>> I am looking for similar definition but for tuples.
>>> 
>>> My application serialises tuples into disk. The size of tuple is unbound but tuple elements a fixed to string, binary, number, boolean or undefined. I cannot use " "|" operator to define as many variants as you like" because number of variants is unlimited. Well practically, I do have a hard limit of 4096 elements per tuple but I am lazy to type in 4096 variants :-) 
>>> 
>>> - Dmitry
>>> 
>>> On Nov 28, 2012, at 11:50 PM, Motiejus Jakštys <desired.mta@REDACTED> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 9:10 PM, Dmitry Kolesnikov
>>>> <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED> wrote:
>>>>> but compiler fails syntax error before: ','
>>>>> 
>>>>> -- CLIP --
>>>>> -type value()     :: string() | binary() | number() | boolean() | undefined.
>>>>> -type entity()    :: [{atom(), value()}] | {field()}.
>>>> 
>>>> These should be fine.
>>>> 
>>>>> -type field()      :: value() | value(), field().
>>>> 
>>>> Maybe you meant
>>>> -type field() :: value() | {value(), field()}.
>>>> 
>>>> ?
>>>> 
>>>> In general, if you want to define tuples of different sizes in -spec,
>>>> you use the "|" operator to define as many variants as you like.
>>>> 
>>>> Likely I don't understand what you are trying to define.

-- 
Siraaj Khandkar
.o.
..o
ooo