World: r3wp

Yes, I'll check that out.

New release at https://github.com/Geomol/World

- Added native function: TRY
- Added set-path! notation to set values in structs (POKE)
- Added support for: to string! handle
- Added context: system/words
- Added helper function: ROUTINE
- Added mold support for routines (SOURCE)
- Added debugging function: ??
- Bugfixes

Fast work John!

Yeah, I'm in a productive period.

Does TRY have an /except option?

Geomol, what would happen if you evaluate something like

    try [return 1]

World is free to use and can be found at https://github.com/Geomol/World

Why don't you try those things out yourselves? I would like to comment, 
but I feel, you get most from it by trying it.

For minimum install, just pick one of the world_* files and cortex.w

To get a binary, click it, then click raw.

Ladislav, if you did try and mean having that code inside a function, 
then there was a bug, which will be fixed in next release.

w> c: context [a: 1 print a print (a)]
1
** Script error: a has no value
** Near: print (a)

Good one, thanks!

About bit operations, I looked at SHIFT. R2 got it at some point, 
but there is no ROTATE. Wouldn't that be useful too? I think about 
graphics operations and maybe other areas.

yes ROTATE is handy to have native when you need it.   its the kind 
of function which will be much slower to build manually than having 
it native (or hand optimised by the language author ;-)

copying from an opened, but not connected tcp port crashes world-lang,

Don't do that! ;)

I need to find a balance with World for how much should be tested 
for. I'm after good performance.

if you open and connect and the peer closes, this happens too

ok, that's a good argument to do something about it. Thanks!

New release at https://github.com/Geomol/World

- Reimplemented bitset! as binary
- Added native function: COMPLEMENT
- Added native function: ROTATE
- Added native function: SHIFT
- Added << and >> operators to cortex.w
- Added hex form for characters, ^(00) - ^(FF)
- Added REFORM to rebol.w
- Added DETAB to rebol.w
- Added ENTAB to rebol.w
- New test
- Bugfixes

About copying from a port, I get a zero, if the port is closed, but 
just under OS X and Linux. Windows version seems to hang in that 
situation. Networking code is open source, and you're welcome to 
suggest changes. I consider using a lib for networking instead of 
coding it all by hand.

SHIFT and ROTATE can only operate on 64-bit integers for now. We 
have to see, if operating on binary! and maybe other datatypes is 
needed.

at the moment i am just in holiday and have only limited access and 
not the infrastructure i am used too. maybe when i am back, i will 
have a look at the code.

Suggestion:


Some routines return a pointer to a structure, like LOCALTIME (from 
LIBC). The structure is struct tm and consists of 11 fields.


In World, we can define LOCALTIME to return a pointer to a handle!, 
but how should we get to all the data fields?


I suggest, TO should be used to copy data from a handle to a structure, 
like:

tm: struct [
	sint sec
	sint min
	sint hour
	sint mday
	...
] none

h: localtime time	; time is some variable holding seconds
to tm h	; This will copy the data (pointed to by h) to tm

Comments? Concerns?

As I understand localtime is not thread safe, the thread safe version 
locatime_r requires the address of a tm structure as an argument. 
(Though it returns the pointer to that same structure if the call 
is succesful.


In general, isn't it a better option for strucutures to be allocated 
in World rather than the called function?

Yes, it's probably a better idea to use routines, where you can allocate 
the structure in World, and handle the routine a pointer to it. But 
some routines does the other thing. In the case of localtime, it's 
a static buffer. Some routines in some libraries dynamic allocate 
memory, that the user can deallocate again with other routines. (Oldes 
pointed me to such a case in ImageMagick.)


If World should support calling such routines and be able to operate 
on the result, we need something like my suggestion, I think.

In the ImageMagick/MagickWand example, it was a string, and it's 
possible to get the string from a handle in World with:

	to string! handle

I thought of something similar with structs.

The to approach seems neat syntactically but is there a danger it 
would be slow with large data structures?

I don't think so, as it's a simple memcpy. The C code looks like 
this:

	if (rb->type == STRUCT_T) {
		if (rc->type == HANDLE_T) {
			Struct *U = (Struct *) rb->value.rc;

   memcpy (U->u, (char *) ((Handle *) rc->value.rc)->pointer, U->size);
		} else
			invalid_argument (W, rc);
	} else
		invalid_argument (W, rb);

The alternative (as I see it) is to not be able to access such structures.

Routines able to operate on structures, you define in World and give 
a pointer to to the routine, doesn't need this memcpy, and it'll 
work today.

To avoid the memcpy, the AS function could be used to redefine a 
handle to a struct. Like:

	as tm handle


, but then handle is redefined as a struct, and it now points to 
a mem area, the routine made. So this can't be deallocated by World, 
and the memory management has to deal with that situation. Not good 
in my view.

New release at https://github.com/Geomol/World

- Added ability to run script from command line
- Added command line options: -i -q -v
- Added usage (view usage for example with: world -?)

- Now cortex.w is found, even if world is started from other directory 
(using argv[0] in C)

- Added facility to copy handle data to struct: to <struct> <handle>
- Removed ?? (not useful because of binding rules)

I found a way under OS X using AppleScript to launch World scripts 
from the Finder by dobble-click, and to start World the same way, 
if anybody is interested. It may be useful for REBOL and other languages 
as well. The method makes a world.app. Speak up, if you need it.

I would like to hear your experiences with launching world scripts 
from command line, or use world to run services, etc.

world_win32 -? crashes on W7 64bit

ech.. crashes completely when I run it from CMD... starting by clicking 
on icon is fine

I test under WinXP with cmd and with cygwin bash terminal, and it 
works:

C:\world\src>.\world.exe -?
Loading Cortex... Done
usage: .\world.exe [options] [script]
...

I should get a Win7 soon, then I can test that.

And then I should be able to make 64-bit Windows version too.

You should also be able to see the usage with any other option not 
recognizes, like: world -h
Maybe the -? is the problem?

I'm not sure about allowing typecasting from handle!.  it sort of 
defeats the purpose of an opaque pointer handler IMHO.   the better 
alternative would be to allow the routine to define what struct pointer 
type it returns directly.

The argv(0) method doesn't work in some circumstances on Windows. 
R3 has been running into some problems because of that.

http://issue.cc/r3/1892shows some circumstances that will trigger 
the problem, so it's a good model for building tests.

Andreas wrote this earlier, in response to your question about this:


Is there a way to figure out, what directory a command launches from, 
which will work across platforms?

Yes and no. There are platform-specific ways. This gist of it:

- Linux: readlink("/proc/self/exe")
- OSX: _NSGetExecutablePath
- Win32: GetModuleFileNameW

(We recently discussed this issue in relation to R3 as well.)

The argv method was fast to implement and works in my cases, so I 
went with that for now. It maybe will need to be replaced by something 
else. Putting cortex.w (and user.w later) into an install dir like 
Library/Application Support/world/ could be a way under OSX, and 
something similar on other platforms.

New version uploaded with system/options/args and some changes to 
quiet mode.

Great to see continuing progress John!