Application to application

• @maxonfjvipon
• 04 Oct 2023
• comments

In the process of working on the recent release 0.32.0, we’ve faced an interesting case related to one of the fundamental concepts of EO in particular and phi-calculus in general - application.

This blog post will attempt to explain what application is under the hood, how it works in our compiler, and why this code (arr.at 0) "Hello" does not work in the way you expect.

Application

Application is the process of copying an abstract object while specifying some of its free attributes.

Consider the example. Here, dog is an abstract object with one free attribute: name.

[name] > dog
  stdout > bark
    sprintf
      "I'm %s! Woof!"
      name

Abstract objects are like templates or factories for concrete objects. So, getting a specific instance of a dog occurs in two stages: copying and setting free attribute. The copying process takes place behind the scenes. Thus, we obtain a new specified object, dog, with its name as “Bary”.

dog "Bary" > bary

At the Java level (into which EO is being translated), application looks something like this:

Phi dog = Phi.Ф.attr("org.eolang.dog").get(); // finding an abstract object "dog"
Phi copy = dog.copy();                        // copying/cloning an abstract object
copy.attr("name").put("Bary");                // setting the free attribute

As you can see, no object execution occurs. It’s vital to note and remember that everything that happens during the application involves getting a new object by copying and setting its internal state. Nothing more.

Application to application

However, despite knowing what application is, we encountered an interesting problem for which we couldn’t find a solution for a long time.

Consider the following code:

1. [name] > dog
2.   "I'm %s! Woof!" > bark
3. * dog > arr
4. (arr.at 0) "Bary" > bary

• As before, dog is an abstract object with one free attribute, name.
• In the third line, an abstract object dog is stored in an array.
• In the fourth line, we attempt to retrieve an abstract object dog from the array by applying object 0 to arr.at (in simpler words, we’re trying to access the first element of the array) and then set the object "Bary" as the free attribute name of the dog.

We can try to clarify the code like this:

1. [name] > dog
2.   "I'm %s! Woof!" > bark
3. * dog > arr
4. arr.at 0 > first
5. first "Bary" > bary

It appears that everything is fine, and the code should work, but it doesn’t, and moreover, it must not.

What’s wrong

It all comes down to the application discussed earlier. No object execution occurs during the application. So if you take a closer look at the fourth line:

4. arr.at 0 > first

there is no information about what’s inside the array. It simply sets the object 0 as the free attribute of the object arr.at, and that’s it.

And what happens next in the fifth line:

5. first "Bary" > bary

We’re taking an object first (which is just a reference to the object arr.at with an already specified free attribute) and then trying to specify its free attribute again.

And obviously (perhaps not so obvious), this leads to an error because we’re trying to set the same free attribute twice.

So, what’s the solution?

Firstly, code where application is placed at the “head” of another application is now prohibited at the grammar level:

(arr.at 0) "Bary"

Secondly, we found out that such cases can be easily resolved with code like this:

(arr.at 0).@ "Bary" > bary

Here, we first specify the free attribute of the object arr.at, and then we access its @ attribute and apply the object "Bary" to it.

The information about the abstract object dog stored inside the array is revealed when we access the @ attribute of the object arr.at.

In this particular case, arr.at.@ is a so-called lambda object that performs calculations and returns the object from the array by providing an index. It’s worth noting that if the free attribute of arr.at is not specified, the following code:

arr.at.@

will fail with an error.

I hope you’ve learned a little more about EO today. Stay tuned for updates and be in touch!