[erlang-questions] Elixir Protocols in Erlang & a Strange Warning

[Kaveh Shahbazian]

First "stringer" was a sample for (turned out it was a bad one) simulating
protocols. So one could write (it can be more complicated, but whatever):

test(V) ->
    X = ?protocolX(V),
    X:act1(),
    X:act2(),
    % ...
    X:actN(SomeArguments),
    OtherThings().

And act1 .. actN are members of 'protocolX'. This way it's clear that 'V'
is behaving as a 'X' (much like interfaces in C#; am I too corrupted?).

BTW since I am no Erlang guru, I will follow the rules (for a foreseeable
future) as you say here.

Kaveh Shahbazian
“Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if
both are frozen.”
― Edward Berard
<http://goo.gl/ZZ2TMu>
<http://stackoverflow.com/users/54467/kaveh-shahbazian>


On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 5:32 PM, Fred Hebert <mononcqc@REDACTED> wrote:

> Hi.
>
> Despite what Joe says in his book, the history of the feature is that
> tuple calls, the form you're using, were kept to allow the deprecation
> of parametrized modules.
>
> In my humble opinion, the 'stateful module' things you're trying to
> accomplish for you stringification is non-intuitive and not erlangish (I
> would be confused by reading that in a code base). May I suggest the
> simpler form, without changing your module:
>
>     stringer:to_string(MyValue)
>
> instead? You will notice it even saves two characters when being called
> over:
>
>     ?stringer(MyValue):to_string().
>
> Without including the macro definition work required, and is more
> idiomatic overall. To use it as a function, simply use
>
>     F = fun stringer:to_string/1,
>     F(MyValue).
>
> Regards,
> Fred.
>
> On 12/13, Kaveh Shahbazian wrote:
> > I do not thing so. Parametrized modules are different than stateful
> > modules. Parametrized modules are deprecated and they were always
> > provisional.
> >
> > Joe Armstrong in Programming Erlang (2nd Edition, Page 418) talked about
> > them and in this same book he was promoting "coming soon" features of R17
> > and It's highly unlikely for them to be deprecated.
> >
> > Kaveh Shahbazian
> > “Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy
> if
> > both are frozen.”
> > ― Edward Berard
> > <http://goo.gl/ZZ2TMu>
> > <http://stackoverflow.com/users/54467/kaveh-shahbazian>
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Dmitry Kolesnikov
> > <dmkolesnikov@REDACTED>wrote:
> >
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > Essentially you are trying to use parametrized modules, which get
> > > deprecated in R14/15 and dropped from R16.
> > > See for details:
> > >  * http://www.erlang.org/news/35
> > >  * http://www.erlang.se/workshop/2003/paper/p29-carlsson.pdf
> > >
> > > This type of problems are solvable either via pattern match or
> currying:
> > >
> > > -module(stringer).
> > > -export([stringer/1,sample/0]).
> > >
> > > stringer(V) when is_list(V) ->
> > >     fun() -> to_string(V, nop) end;
> > > stringer(V) when is_atom(V) ->
> > >     fun() -> to_string(V, nop) end;
> > > stringer(_V) ->
> > >     fun() -> not_implemented end.
> > >
> > > to_string(V, _Nop) ->
> > >     Buffer = io_lib:format("~p",[V]),
> > >     lists:flatten(Buffer).
> > >
> > > sample() ->
> > >     io:format("~p~n", [(stringer([1,2]))()]),
> > >     io:format("~p~n", [(stringer(cute_atom))()]),
> > >     io:format("~p~n", [(stringer(13))()]).
> > >
> > >
> > > Best Regards,
> > > Dmitry
> > >
> > > On Dec 13, 2013, at 8:31 AM, Kaveh Shahbazian <
> kaveh.shahbazian@REDACTED>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > I wanted to write something like ((IStringer)object).ToString() (in C#)
> > > in Erlang. After some studying I've learnt that Elixir has something
> called
> > > Protocols that pretty much resembles the same thing of C# (in an
> inside-out
> > > manner). Then I came up with this idea/code in Erlang - which is nice
> > > enough to me like:
> > >
> > > ?stringer(my_val):to_string().
> > >
> > > And it either returns the expected value or not_implemented atom!
> > >
> > > But 2 questions:
> > >
> > > 1 - Why nobody use this or promote things based on stateful modules in
> > > Erlang? (OTP aside and from talking to some Erlangers they did not know
> > > that actually OTP is built around this! So really there is a need to
> change
> > > how Erlang is being taught and promoted. It's possible that I am
> confused.).
> > >
> > > 2 - Why I get this warning? That call actually never fails.
> > >
> > > The warning:
> > >
> > > stringer.erl:18: Warning: invalid module and/or function name; this
> call will always fail
> > > stringer.erl:19: Warning: invalid module and/or function name; this
> call will always fail
> > > stringer.erl:20: Warning: invalid module and/or function name; this
> call will always fail
> > >
> > > The code:
> > >
> > > -module(stringer).
> > > -export([to_string/1,sample/0]).
> > >
> > > -define(stringer(V), {stringer, V}).
> > >
> > > to_string({stringer, V}) when is_list(V) ->
> > >     to_string(V, nop);
> > > to_string({stringer, V}) when is_atom(V) ->
> > >     to_string(V, nop);
> > > to_string({stringer, _V}) ->
> > >     not_implemented.
> > >
> > > to_string(V, _Nop) ->
> > >     Buffer = io_lib:format("~p",[V]),
> > >     lists:flatten(Buffer).
> > >
> > > sample() ->
> > >     io:format("~p~n", [?stringer([1,2]):to_string()]),
> > >     io:format("~p~n", [?stringer(cute_atom):to_string()]),
> > >     io:format("~p~n", [?stringer(13):to_string()]).
> > >
> > > And the output is:
> > >
> > > "[1,2]"
> > > "cute_atom"
> > > not_implemented
> > >
> > >  _______________________________________________
> > > erlang-questions mailing list
> > > erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > > http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> > >
> > >
> > >
>
> > _______________________________________________
> > erlang-questions mailing list
> > erlang-questions@REDACTED
> > http://erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/attachments/20131213/9b7450d3/attachment.htm>