http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=8900

:-(

(The code there is called cartesianProd but it's the reduced code, so it doesn't really compute the cartesian product. But that's where it's from.)

So far, the outstanding blockers for cartesianProduct are: 1) Compiler bug which causes unittest failure:

	std/range.d(4629): Error: variable lower used before set
	std/range.d(4630): Error: variable upper used before set

(Jonathan had a pull request with a Phobos workaround for this, which I _think_ is already merged, but the autotester is still failing at this point. :-/)

2) Issue 8542 (crosstalk between template instantiations)

3) And now, issue 8900 (zip fails to compile with repeat(char[]))

So there's still no joy for cartesianProduct. :-(

I'm getting a bit frustrated with the Phobos bugs related to ranges and std.algorithm. I think we need to increase the number of unittests. And by that I mean, GREATLY increase the number of unittests. Most of the current tests are merely sanity tests for the most common usage patterns, most basic types, or tests added as a result of fixed bugs.

This is inadequate.

We need to actively unittest corner cases, rare combinations, unusual usages, etc.. Torture test various combinations of range constructs. Algorithms. Nested range constructs. Nested algorithms. Deliberately cook up nasty tests that try their best to break the code by using unusual parameters, unusual range-like objects, strange data, etc.. Go beyond the simple cases to test non-trivial things.  We need unittests that pass unusual structs and objects into the range constructs and algorithms, and make sure they actually work as we have been _assuming_ they should.

I have a feeling there are a LOT of bugs lurking in there behind overlooked corner cases, off by 1 errors, and other such careless slips, as well as code that only works for basic types like arrays, which starts breaking when you hand it something non-trivial.  All these issues must be weeded out and prevented from slipping back in.

Here's a start:

- Create a set of structs/classes (inside a version(unittest) block)
  that are input, forward, bidirectional, output, etc., ranges, that are
  NOT merely arrays.

- There should be some easy way, perhaps using std.random, of creating
  non-trivial instances of these things.  These should be put in a
  separate place, perhaps outside the std/ subdirectory, where they can
  be imported into unittest blocks by std.range, std.algorithm, whatever
  else that needs extensive testing.

- Use these ranges as input for testing range constructs and algorithms.

- For best results, use a compile-time loop to loop over a given
  combination of these range types, and run them through the same set of
  tests. This will improve the currently spotty test coverage.  Perhaps
  provide some templated functions that, given a set of range types
  (from the above structs/classes) and a set of functions, run through
  all combinations of them to make sure they all work. (We run unittests
  separately anyway, we aren't afraid of long-running tests.)


T

-- 
"How are you doing?" "Doing what?"

On Friday, 26 October 2012 at 22:43:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> I'm getting a bit frustrated with the Phobos bugs related to ranges and
> std.algorithm. I think we need to increase the number of unittests. And
> by that I mean, GREATLY increase the number of unittests. Most of the
> current tests are merely sanity tests for the most common usage
> patterns, most basic types, or tests added as a result of fixed bugs.
>
> This is inadequate.

Unit tests are not the solution to this. There are too many range combinations and types to effectively unit test everything. What we need is proper semantic support for ranges (and other conceptual classes of types). For example, this should not compile:

void foo(Range)(Range r) if (isForwardRange!Range)
{
    r.popBack();
}

But it will, because of the way templates work in D -- nothing is checked until you try to use it.

Imagine I could compile non-template code like this:

void foo(int x)
{
    writeln(x.name);
}

Imagine you had to try to call it before the static type error was caught. This is not a way to write robust code, especially with the combinatorial explosion of range types that exist.

Template constraints are nice, but not enough. We really need something *like* the proposed C++ concepts, or just something analogous to interfaces. I should be able to write something like this:

void foo(ForwardRange Range)(Range r)
{
    r.popBack();
}

And *immediately* get a type error without having to instantiate it with a variety of different range types. This is the only way I can see these kinds of problems going away. Unit testing does not scale with exponential use cases.

Peter Alexander:

> void foo(ForwardRange Range)(Range r)
> {
>     r.popBack();
> }
>
> And *immediately* get a type error without having to instantiate it with a variety of different range types.

It's not an easy problem. To solve it the Rust language uses typeclasses adapted from Haskell. But unlike the usual Haskell compilers Rust doesn't use global type inferencing and it keeps the C++-style monomorphization, so at run-time its generic programming is as efficient as C++ generic programming.

I also hope Rust designers will take a look at this (Efficient Dynamic Dispatch without Virtual Function Tables. The SmallEiffel Compiler), an alternative to virtual tables. Maybe the D front-end could do the same on request with a compilation switch (with no changes in D language):

http://smarteiffel.loria.fr/papers/oopsla97.pdf

Bye,
bearophile

On Saturday, 27 October 2012 at 11:41:07 UTC, bearophile wrote:
> Peter Alexander:
>
>> void foo(ForwardRange Range)(Range r)
>> {
>>    r.popBack();
>> }
>>
>> And *immediately* get a type error without having to instantiate it with a variety of different range types.
>
> It's not an easy problem. To solve it the Rust language uses typeclasses adapted from Haskell. But unlike the usual Haskell compilers Rust doesn't use global type inferencing and it keeps the C++-style monomorphization, so at run-time its generic programming is as efficient as C++ generic programming.

Yeah, it's certainly not going to be easy. It's unfortunate that D adopted the whole C++ style "glorified macros" approach to templates -- it makes it very difficult to reason about (or automate reasoning about) the semantics of your code.

Retrofitting some sort of structure to templates will be a Herculean task, but I think it has to happen. It is clear to me that the development process we use now (write the template, try a few instantiations, pray) is unsustainable beyond simple templates.

On 10/26/12 6:45 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=8900
>
> :-(
>
> (The code there is called cartesianProd but it's the reduced code, so it
> doesn't really compute the cartesian product. But that's where it's
> from.)
>
> So far, the outstanding blockers for cartesianProduct are:
> 1) Compiler bug which causes unittest failure:
>
> 	std/range.d(4629): Error: variable lower used before set
> 	std/range.d(4630): Error: variable upper used before set
>
> (Jonathan had a pull request with a Phobos workaround for this, which I
> _think_ is already merged, but the autotester is still failing at this
> point. :-/)
>
> 2) Issue 8542 (crosstalk between template instantiations)
>
> 3) And now, issue 8900 (zip fails to compile with repeat(char[]))
>
> So there's still no joy for cartesianProduct. :-(

Often when there are many issues caused by a specific artifact, there are only a couple of compiler bugs manifesting themselves in various unpredictable ways.

> I'm getting a bit frustrated with the Phobos bugs related to ranges and
> std.algorithm. I think we need to increase the number of unittests. And
> by that I mean, GREATLY increase the number of unittests.

I don't think that's the best way. Walter and I have had a lasting disagreement about this as he firmly believes unittests are the way to make sure the compiler works well. In my opinion the psychological effect has been negative because this outlook has caused incompletely-defined features to get implemented (in a latent expectation that unittests will cause any issues to be detected).


Andrei

On 10/27/12 6:20 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Friday, 26 October 2012 at 22:43:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> I'm getting a bit frustrated with the Phobos bugs related to ranges and
>> std.algorithm. I think we need to increase the number of unittests. And
>> by that I mean, GREATLY increase the number of unittests. Most of the
>> current tests are merely sanity tests for the most common usage
>> patterns, most basic types, or tests added as a result of fixed bugs.
>>
>> This is inadequate.
>
> Unit tests are not the solution to this. There are too many range
> combinations and types to effectively unit test everything.

Agreed.

> What we need
> is proper semantic support for ranges (and other conceptual classes of
> types). For example, this should not compile:
>
> void foo(Range)(Range r) if (isForwardRange!Range)
> {
> r.popBack();
> }

No, this has nothing to do with the problem at hand.


Andrei

On 10/27/12 8:23 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
> Yeah, it's certainly not going to be easy. It's unfortunate that D
> adopted the whole C++ style "glorified macros" approach to templates --
> it makes it very difficult to reason about (or automate reasoning about)
> the semantics of your code.

I think D has reached a sweet spot with restricted templates.

> Retrofitting some sort of structure to templates will be a Herculean
> task, but I think it has to happen. It is clear to me that the
> development process we use now (write the template, try a few
> instantiations, pray) is unsustainable beyond simple templates.

It's not clear to me at all. The mechanism works very well and is more expressive than alternatives used by other languages.


Andrei

On Sat, Oct 27, 2012 at 09:06:11AM -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 10/27/12 8:23 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
> >Yeah, it's certainly not going to be easy. It's unfortunate that D adopted the whole C++ style "glorified macros" approach to templates -- it makes it very difficult to reason about (or automate reasoning about) the semantics of your code.
> 
> I think D has reached a sweet spot with restricted templates.
> 
> >Retrofitting some sort of structure to templates will be a Herculean task, but I think it has to happen. It is clear to me that the development process we use now (write the template, try a few instantiations, pray) is unsustainable beyond simple templates.
> 
> It's not clear to me at all. The mechanism works very well and is more expressive than alternatives used by other languages.
[...]

I think the complaint is that the template constraints enforce ducktype requirements on the *caller*, but not on the template code itself. That's what Peter's example was about: the signature constraint declares that the template takes an input range, yet the template body makes use of non-input range properties of the argument.

I think there is some merit to being able to declare concepts; for example:

	// This concept matches any type that has fields that satisfy
	// what's specified inside the body.
	concept InputRange(T) {
		bool empty;	// this matches @property bool empty() too
		T front;
		void popFront();
	}

	auto myRangeBasedFunc(InputRange r) {
		r.popBack();	// compile-time error: InputRange does
				// not define .popBack
	}

This way, *both* the user of the template and the template writer are kept "honest" (i.e., they both have to conform to the requirements of an input range). The compiler can thus statically check the template for correctness *before* it ever gets instantiated.

Not only so, the compiler will be able to generate a meaningful error message when the templates fail to match -- it can tell the user "the template didn't match 'cos struct X that you tried to pass to it isn't an InputRange, nor a ForwardRange, ... etc.".

Currently, if the template writer screws up, the compiler doesn't know any better, and only when the user actually tries to pass something that the template body can't handle, does the error manifest itself. Which seems a bit late -- it should be the template writer who first notices the problem (like if the compiler can statically verify the template body and complain loudly before the code ever gets to the user). Plus, the error message is usually a long cryptic sequence of instantiation failures containing all sorts of internal Phobos types that the user has no idea about. The compiler can hardly do much better, because it doesn't have enough information to make a meaningful message.


T

-- 
Старый друг лучше новых двух.

Am Sat, 27 Oct 2012 12:20:51 +0200
schrieb "Peter Alexander" <peter.alexander.au@gmail.com>:

> On Friday, 26 October 2012 at 22:43:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> > I'm getting a bit frustrated with the Phobos bugs related to
> > ranges and
> > std.algorithm. I think we need to increase the number of
> > unittests. And
> > by that I mean, GREATLY increase the number of unittests. Most
> > of the
> > current tests are merely sanity tests for the most common usage
> > patterns, most basic types, or tests added as a result of fixed
> > bugs.
> >
> > This is inadequate.
> 
> Unit tests are not the solution to this. There are too many range combinations and types to effectively unit test everything.


Yes and no. We can't test all possible combinations, but we should try to at least test all code paths:
------------------
void test(R)(R range)
{
    static if(isInputRange!R)
        r.popFront();
    else if(isForwardRange!R)
        r.saev();
}

unittest
{
    //Should test at least with InputRange & ForwardRange
}
-------------------

We sometimes even have templates that are not used in phobos at all (and don't have unittests). Those are really evil as they can break silently if some typo is introduced.

On Saturday, 27 October 2012 at 13:06:09 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 10/27/12 8:23 AM, Peter Alexander wrote:
>> Retrofitting some sort of structure to templates will be a Herculean
>> task, but I think it has to happen. It is clear to me that the
>> development process we use now (write the template, try a few
>> instantiations, pray) is unsustainable beyond simple templates.
>
> It's not clear to me at all. The mechanism works very well and is more expressive than alternatives used by other languages.

I'm not sure I can agree it works well.

For example, here's what happened with bug 8900 mentioned in the OP:

std.range.zip creates a Zip object, which has a Tuple member. Tuple has a toString function, which calls formatElement, which calls formatValue, which calls formatRange, which (when there's a range of characters) has a code path for right-aligning the range. To right-align the range it needs to call walkLength.

The problem arises when you zip an infinite range of characters e.g. repeat('a').

Before pull request 880, walkLength accepted infinite ranges and just returned size_t.max. Pull request 880 added a constraint to walkLength to stop it accepting infinite ranges. Suddenly, you cannot zip a range of infinite chars because of a seemingly unrelated change.

This would have been caught if there was a unit test, but there wasn't, and as Dijkstra says, "testing can be a very effective way to show the presence of bugs, but it is hopelessly inadequate for showing their absence." There are probably other places that are broken, and many changes in the future will just introduce more bugs without tests.

Maybe we have different standards for "working well", but to me at least, this isn't what "working well" looks like.

Working well in this case would look like this:

- The person that put together pull request 880 would add the template constraint to walkLength.
- On the next compile he would get this error: "formatRange potentially calls walkLength with an infinite range." (or something along those lines).
- The person fixes formatRange, and all is well.

No need for unit tests, it's all caught as soon as possible without need for instantiation.