Hi Sven, On 10 April 2018 at 19:36, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
I have trouble understanding your problem analysis, and how your proposed solution, would solve it.
The discussion started with my proposal to modify the Zinc streams to check the return value of #next for nil rather than using #atEnd to iterate over the underlying stream. You correctly pointed out that the intention behind #atEnd is that it can be used to control iterating over streams.
Where is it being said that #next and/or #atEnd should be blocking or non-blocking ?
There is existing code that assumes that #atEnd is non-blocking and that #next is allowed block. I believe that we should keep those conditions.
How is this related to how EOF is signalled ?
Because, combined with terminal EOF not being known until the user explicitly flags it (with Ctrl-D) it means that #atEnd can't be used for iterating over input from stdin connected to a terminal.
It seems to me that there are quite a few classes of streams that are 'special' in the sense that #next could be blocking and/or #atEnd could be unclear - socket/network streams, serial streams, maybe stdio (interactive or not). Without a message like #isDataAvailable you cannot handle those without blocking.
Right. I think this is a distraction (I was trying to explain some details, but it's causing more confusion instead of helping). The important point is that #atEnd doesn't work for iterating over streams with terminal input
Reading from stdin seems like a very rare case for a Smalltalk system (not that it should not be possible).
There's been quite a bit of discussion and several projects recently related to using pharo for scripting, so it may become more common. E.g. https://www.quora.com/Can-Smalltalk-be-a-batch-file-scripting-language/answe... https://github.com/rajula96reddy/pharo-cli
I have a feeling that too much functionality is being pushed into too small an API.
This is just about how should Zinc streams be iterating over the underlying streams. You didn't like checking the result of #next for nil since it isn't general, correctly pointing out that nil is a valid value for non-byte oriented streams. But #atEnd doesn't work for stdin from a terminal. At this point I think there are three options: 1. Modify Zinc to check the return value of #next instead of using #atEnd. This is what all existing character / byte oriented streams in Squeak and Pharo do. At that point the Zinc streams can be used on all file / stdio input and output. 2. Modify all streams to signal EOF in some other way, i.e. a sentinel or notification / exception. This is what we were discussing below. But it is a decent chunk of work with significant impact on the existing code base. 3. Require anyone who wants to read from stdin to code around Zinc's inability to handle terminal input. I'd prefer to avoid this option if possible. Does that clarify the situation? Thanks, Alistair
On 10 Apr 2018, at 18:30, Alistair Grant <akgrant0710@gmail.com> wrote:
First a quick update:
After doing some work on primitiveFileAtEnd, #atEnd now answers correctly for files that don't report their size correctly, e.g. /dev/urandom and /proc/cpuinfo, whether the files are opened directly or redirected through stdin.
However determining whether stdin from a terminal has reached the end of file can't be done without making #atEnd blocking since we have to wait for the user to flag the end of file, e.g. by typing Ctrl-D. And #atEnd is assumed to be non-blocking.
So currently using ZnCharacterReadStream with stdin from a terminal will result in a stack dump similar to:
MessageNotUnderstood: receiver of "<" is nil UndefinedObject(Object)>>doesNotUnderstand: #< ZnUTF8Encoder>>nextCodePointFromStream: ZnUTF8Encoder(ZnCharacterEncoder)>>nextFromStream: ZnCharacterReadStream>>nextElement ZnCharacterReadStream(ZnEncodedReadStream)>>next UndefinedObject>>DoIt
Going back through the various suggestions that have been made regarding using a sentinel object vs. raising a notification / exception, my (still to be polished) suggestion is to:
1. Add an endOfStream instance variable 2. When the end of the stream is reached answer the value of the instance variable (i.e. the result of sending #value to the variable). 3. The initial default value would be a block that raises a Deprecation warning and then returns nil. This would allow existing code to function for a changeover period. 4. At the end of the deprecation period the default value would be changed to a unique sentinel object which would answer itself as its #value.
At any time users of the stream can set their own sentinel, including a block that raises an exception.
Cheers, Alistair
On 4 April 2018 at 19:24, Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self@gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks for this discussion.
On Wed, Apr 4, 2018 at 1:37 PM, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
Alistair,
First off, thanks for the discussions and your contributions, I really appreciate them.
But I want to have a discussion at the high level of the definition and semantics of the stream API in Pharo.
On 4 Apr 2018, at 13:20, Alistair Grant <akgrant0710@gmail.com> wrote:
On 4 April 2018 at 12:56, Sven Van Caekenberghe <sven@stfx.eu> wrote:
Playing a bit devil's advocate, the idea is that, in general,
[ stream atEnd] whileFalse: [ stream next. "..." ].
is no longer allowed ?
It hasn't been allowed "forever" [1]. It's just been misused for almost as long.
[1] Time began when stdio stream support was introduced. :-)
I am still not convinced. Another way to put it would be that the old #atEnd or #upToEnd do not make sense for these streams and some new loop is needed, based on a new test (it exists for socket streams already).
[ stream isDataAvailable ] whileTrue: [ stream next ]
And you want to replace it with
[ stream next ifNil: [ false ] ifNotNil: [ :x | "..." true ] whileTrue.
That is a pretty big change, no ?
That's the way quite a bit of code already operates.
As Denis pointed out, it's obviously problematic in the general sense, since nil can be embedded in non-byte oriented streams. I suspect that in practice not many people write code that reads streams from both byte oriented and non-byte oriented streams.
Maybe yes, maybe no. As Denis' example shows there is a clear definition problem.
And I do use streams of byte arrays or strings all the time, this is really important. I want my parsers to work on all kinds of streams.
I think/feel like a proper EOF exception would be better, more correct.
[ [ stream next. "..." true ] on: EOF do: [ false ] ] whileTrue.
I agree, but the email thread Nicolas pointed to raises some performance questions about this approach. It should be straightforward to do a basic performance comparison which I'll get around to if other objections aren't raised.
Reading in bigger blocks, using #readInto:startingAt:count: (which is basically Unix's (2) Read sys call), would solve performance problems, I think.
Will we throw away #atEnd then ? Do we need it if we cannot use it ?
Unix file i/o returns EOF if the end of file has been reach OR if an error occurs. You should still check #atEnd after reading past the end of the file to make sure no error occurred. Another part of the primitive change I'm proposing is to return additional information about what went wrong in the event of an error.
I am sorry, but this kind of semantics (the OR) is way too complex at the general image level, it is too specific and based on certain underlying implementation details.
Sven
We could modify the read primitive so that it fails if an error has occurred, and then #atEnd wouldn't be required.
Cheers, Alistair
On 4 Apr 2018, at 12:41, Alistair Grant <akgrant0710@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Nicolas,
On 4 April 2018 at 12:36, Nicolas Cellier <nicolas.cellier.aka.nice@gmail.com> wrote:
2018-04-04 12:18 GMT+02:00 Alistair Grant <akgrant0710@gmail.com>:
Hi Sven,
On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 11:32:02AM +0200, Sven Van Caekenberghe wrote:
Somehow, somewhere there was a change to the implementation of the primitive called by some streams' #atEnd.
That's a proposed change by me, but it hasn't been integrated yet. So the discussion below should apply to the current stable vm (from August last year).
IIRC, someone said it is implemented as 'remaining size being zero' and some virtual unix files like /dev/random are zero sized.
Currently, for files other than sdio (stdout, stderr, stdin) it is effectively defined as:
atEnd := stream position >= stream size
And, as you say, plenty of virtual unix files report size 0.
Now, all kinds of changes are being done image size to work around this.
I would phrase this slightly differently :-)
Some code does the right thing, while other code doesn't. E.g.:
MultiByteFileStream>>upToEnd is good, while FileStream>>contents is incorrect
I am a strong believer in simple, real (i.e. infinite) streams, but I am not sure we are doing the right thing here.
Point is, I am not sure #next returning nil is official and universal.
Consider the comments:
Stream>>#next "Answer the next object accessible by the receiver."
ReadStream>>#next "Primitive. Answer the next object in the Stream represented by the receiver. Fail if the collection of this stream is not an Array or a String. Fail if the stream is positioned at its end, or if the position is out of bounds in the collection. Optional. See Object documentation whatIsAPrimitive."
Note how there is no talk about returning nil !
I think we should discuss about this first.
Was the low level change really correct and the right thing to do ?
The primitive change proposed doesn't affect this discussion. It will mean that #atEnd returns false (correctly) sometimes, while currently it returns true (incorrectly). The end result is still incorrect, e.g. #contents returns an empty string for /proc/cpuinfo.
You're correct about no mention of nil, but we have:
FileStream>>next
(position >= readLimit and: [self atEnd]) ifTrue: [^nil] ifFalse: [^collection at: (position := position + 1)]
which has been around for a long time (I suspect, before Pharo existed).
Having said that, I think that raising an exception is a better solution, but it is a much, much bigger change than the one I proposed in https://github.com/pharo-project/pharo/pull/1180.
Cheers, Alistair
Hi, yes, if you are after universal behavior englobing Unix streams, the Exception might be the best way. Because on special stream you can't allways say in advance, you have to try. That's the solution adopted by authors of Xtreams. But there is a runtime penalty associated to it.
The penalty once was so high that my proposal to generalize EndOfStream usage was rejected a few years ago by AndreaRaab. http://forum.world.st/EndOfStream-unused-td68806.html
Thanks for this, I'll definitely take a look.
Do you have a sense of how Denis' suggestion of using an EndOfStream object would compare?
It would keep the same coding style, but avoid the problems with nil.
Thanks, Alistair
I have regularly benched Xtreams, but stopped a few years ago. Maybe i can excavate and pass on newer VM.
In the mean time, i had experimented a programmable end of stream behavior (via a block, or any other valuable) http://www.squeaksource.com/XTream.htm so as to reconcile performance and universality, but it was a source of complexification at implementation side.
Nicolas
Note also that a Guille introduced something new, #closed which is related to the difference between having no more elements (maybe right now, like an open network stream) and never ever being able to produce more data.
Sven