Re: New to GNU APL, curiosities or possible bugs?

[Dr . Jürgen Sauermann]

    Hi John,
      
      thanks. See my comments inline below.
      
      Best Regards,
      Jürgen

On 2/23/21 8:44 PM, edxmail-johnh@usa.net wrote:

Hi Jürgen and colleagues,

I've done a bit more digging, including running the apl-1.8 Docker container and, where applicable, APLX V5.1 and Dyalog APL V18.0.

My conclusion is the Mac OS X 10.15.* build is broken and it may be easier to abandon OS X than to fix it.... :(

I've appended a screen log of a build and demonstrated the following three of the bugs.

1) Warning )loading )saved workspaces. Sorry not to be clear. The tarball build cannot load the workspaces it has shaved--same version, same build. This is clearly demonstrated at the end of the screen log. Here's the salient bit:

jlh@MacBook-XNOR apl-1.8 % apl
::connect() to supposedly existing APserver failed: Invalid argument

    Apparently the APserver (a binary that is
      being built together with the APL intertpreter)
      could not be found.
      
      In a "normal" build:
      
      * the APserver is located in directory src/APs, and
      * should be installed in the same directory as the apl interpreter
      itself.
      
      If you start apl with command line option -l 37
      then it prints more information about APserver, e.g.:
      
      eedjsa@server68:~/projects/AVR_workspace/Jalousie_3$ apl -l 37
      initial RLIMIT_AS (aka. virtual memory) is: 'unlimited'
      ...
      initializing paths from  $PATH =
/home/eedjsa/.nvm/versions/node/v12.15.0/bin:/home/eedjsa/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin
      APL_bin_path is: /usr/local/bin
      ...
      Using TCP socket towards APserver...
      connecting to 127.0.0.1 TCP port 16366 failed.
          (the first ::connect() to APserver is expected to fail,
        unless
           APserver was started manually)
      Starting a new APserver listening on 127.0.0.1 TCP port
        16366
      Found /usr/local/bin/APserver
      Starting /usr/local/bin/APserver --port 16366 --auto...
      
      connected to APserver, socket is 4
      using Svar_DB on APserver!
      
      
    If
        I remember correctly then you could also suppress this warning
        either with 
        command line option --noSV or with the following line in
        one of your preferences files:
      
    SharedVars    Disabled
      
    but the proper way is to fix the installation,

                    ______ _   __ __  __    ___     ____   __
                   / ____// | / // / / /   /   |   / __ \ / /
                  / / __ /  |/ // / / /   / /| |  / /_/ // /
                 / /_/ // /|  // /_/ /   / ___ | / ____// /___
                 \____//_/ |_/ \____/   /_/  |_|/_/    /_____/

            Welcome to GNU APL version 1.8 / Unversioned directory

    Above is the root cause of the
        problem:            ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑

                Copyright (C) 2008-2019  Dr. Jürgen Sauermann
                       Banner by FIGlet: www.figlet.org

                This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
                          for details run: apl --gpl.

     This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
         according to the GNU Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.

Svar_DB not connected in Svar_DB::is_registered_id()
      ∇hello
[1] 'hello'
[2] ∇
      )wsid hello
WAS CLEAR WS
      )save hello
2021-02-23  14:00:46 (GMT-5)
      )clear
CLEAR WS
      )load hello
WARNING: this workspace was )SAVEd with a VERY old SVN version of GNU APL.
Expect problems, in particular when the )SI was not clear.
In case of problems, please try )COPY instead of )LOAD.
SAVED 2021-02-23 14:00:46 (GMT-5)
      )off

    First of all, )save produces an old file
      format.These days )dump is preferred over )save
      since it makes it much easier to recover most of a broken
      workspace files, and the )dump
      format is pretty much directly executable APL code rather than
      xml. That makes )dump more
      independent of the interpreter version than )save.
      
      The only disadvantage of )dump is that it does not save the )SI
      stack likw )save does.
      So when you )dump a workspace the you loose the )SI stach and with
      it all local variables.
      
      Now to the problem itself. Your tar file contains, among others, a
      file named buildtag.hh.
      This files is overridden when ./configure is run (see file configure.ac
      lines 695 ff. or more
      precisely by script src/buildtag). If that script finds
      program svnversion, then it assumes that
      you have SVN installed and use it (as opposed to unpacking a tar
      file). At least that was the plan.
      
      In your case it seems like SVN was installed but ./configure was
      run in a directory that was
      not fetched with SVN (the "Unversioned directory" above is te
      output of svnversion but was not
      properly matched. Or the buildtag.hh in the tarfile was
      already broken.
      
      You can fix this in 2 ways:
      
      * fix the last line of buildtag.hh to read, for example:
      
      #define ARCHIVE_SVN " 17771"
      
      * recover file buildtag.hh from the tar file, e.g.
      
      tar xvf apl-1.8.tar.gz apl-1.8/src/buildtag.hh
      
    This is needed after every ./configure; after it recompile (make)
    and reinstall (make install)
    the interpreter.

Goodbye.
Session duration: 264.45 seconds
jlh@MacBook-XNOR apl-1.8 %

2) Sqlite3 connectivity. The above error messages in magenta report that apl cannot connect to Sqlite3 APserver. I get this error message every other time I start apl, this is documented in the my original (endless) email. This behavior is not observed when running APL in the docker container. 

3)  ⎕plot broken - this should not be a syntax error and isn't observed when running APL in the docker container (this is also demonstrated in the screen log).

      ⎕plot ''
SYNTAX ERROR+

    First of all, the + after SYNTAX ERROR indicates that running
    command )MORE will provide more information.
    It will probably say that this syntax error was caused by some
    missing libraries that ⎕PLOT needs for performing
    its task. This is a typical Apple problem and will disappear if the
    missing libs are found
    (and ./configure; make; make install is run again).
    
    The libraries missing here are either:
    
    * libxcb and friends or
    * libgtk and friends.
    
    libxcb (or myself) had some problems with the rendering of Unicode
    characters, I would therefore recommend
    libbgtk  instead.

      ⎕PLOT ''
      ^

4) The state indicator.  I compared your implementation of the the state indicator to Dyalog's and APLX's and it's clear you have chosen to do it differently than other interpreters I have used. Both Dyalog and APLX (and if memory services APL 2, APL*PLUS and APL20) all omitted interactive mode errors from the SI stack.

I'm not sure what motivated your design, but clearly this appears to be what you intended. Thanks.

    The design was motivated by the fact that IBM APL2 creates (and
    displays) an )SI entry for every failed input
    line in immediate execution. I find it more plausible if ⎕SI has a
    1:1 relation to )SI instead of removing
    the immediate execution entries. Since ⎕SI is not in any way
    standardized it took the freedom to implement
    it this way, I hardly know Dyalog and the last APLX version that I
    worked with was APL68000 (and if I remember
    correctly then they had no ⎕SI).

The devolution of the Mac is sad, but all is flux. Thanks for your Docker container; I'll take advantage of that for further use of gnu-apl.

    As of today I haven't heard of anybody using the Docker container.
    In the meantime I have received an
    announcement from the Docker hub people that they plan to remove
    containers with low download
    rates (like the GNU APL one). That makes me believe that maintaining
    the GNU APL Docker container
    does not make much sense.

Indeed, thanks for your great contribution.

    You're welcome.

/John

------ Original Message ------
Received: Tue, 23 Feb 2021 04:18:42 AM PST
From: Dr. Jürgen Sauermann <mail@xn--jrgen-sauermann-zvb.de>
To: edxmail-johnh@usa.net, bug-apl@gnu.org,Elias Mårtenson <lokedhs@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: New to GNU APL, curiosities or possible bugs?

Hi John,

see below.

Best Regards,
Jürgen

On 2/22/21 11:18 PM, edxmail-johnh@usa.net wrote:

Hi,

I've just spent a couple of days working to get gnu-apl up and running under OS X Catalina. Good progress has been made, but I'm unsure if I have a stable and fully functioning copy of the interpreter.

Welcome to GNU APL.

During this exercise, I encountered four experiences that may indicate bugs. They are:

1. Build Issue?: Newly saved workspaces rejected as ancient by interpreter

This can only happens if the interpreter (-binary) that )SAVEd the WS
is different from the interpreter thast )LOADs it. Note that ./configure
may change the reference numbers (= SVN versions) that were used
to compare the workspace versions.

1. Quirk?: Sqlite3 connection error message comes and goes

That would be a question for Elias, I believe

1. Mystery?: Quad-Plot usage

see info apl (chapter 2.30) or online here:

https://www.gnu.org/software/apl/apl.html#Section-2_002e30

1. Bug?: ⎕SI for non function execution errors?
   

Not sure what you mean:

      )SIC
      ÷0
DOMAIN ERROR
      ÷0
      ^
      4 ⎕CR ⎕SI 4
┏→━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃┏→━━━━━━━┓ ┏→━━━━━━━━━━┓┃
┃┃      ÷0┃ ┃4 ⎕CR ⎕SI 4┃┃
┃┗━━━━━━━━┛ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━┛┃
┗∊━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┛

I'm unfamiliar with the gnu packaging tools and completely overwhelmed by this enormous code base. Thus, I apologize in advance for any limitations or mistakes in this report.

Regards,
John Helm

---

1) Build Issue: Newly saved workspaces warned as ancient by interpreter

The "standard" compile and install sequence using the apl-1.8.tar.gz tarball does not compile correctly on OS X Catalina.

The problem is configure runs svn commands to write a file ./src/buildtag.hh and these commands fail because the tarball is not an SVN repo. The resulting binary compiles without a build number. The net result is workspaces are saved with a null build number, and )LOADing these files fails with the following message:

    WARNING: this workspace was )SAVEd with a VERY old SVN version of GNU APL.
    Expect problems, in particular when the )SI was not clear.
    In case of problems, please try )COPY instead of )LOAD.
    DOMAIN ERROR+


    immediate_execution() caught APL error 0x50004 (DOMAIN ERROR)


Here are some details from the compilations:


A) SVN errors emitted when running configure on the standard tarball
================================================================

    configure: creating ./src//buildtag.hh
    svn: E155007: '/Users/jlh/.local/etc/repos/apl-1.8/src/Archive.cc' is not a working copy
    configure: creating ./src/makefile.h
    configure: creating ./src/configure_args.cc

    # Note SVN number missing in --version report

    jlh@MacBook-XNOR apl-1.8 % apl --version
    BUILDTAG:
    ---------
        Project:        GNU APL
        Version / SVN:  1.8 / Unversioned directory
        Build Date:     2021-02-22 17:48:39 UTC
        Build OS:       Darwin 19.6.0 x86_64
        config.status:  '--includedir=/opt/local/' '--with-sqlite3=/opt/local/' '--with-postgresql=no'
        Archive SVN:
     jlh@MacBook-XNOR apl-1.8 %

----------------------------------------------------------------

    ⍝ Create a workspace, save, and reload it to surface error

              )wsid
    IS CLEAR WS
          ∇hello
    [1] 'hello world!'
    [2] ∇
          )wsid hello
    WAS CLEAR WS
          )save
    2021-02-22  12:58:15 (GMT-5) hello
          )clear
    CLEAR WS
          )load hello
    WARNING: this workspace was )SAVEd with a VERY old SVN version of GNU APL.
    Expect problems, in particular when the )SI was not clear.
    In case of problems, please try )COPY instead of )LOAD.
    SAVED 2021-02-22 12:58:15 (GMT-5)


================================================================
B) Pull down svn trunk and configure, make, etc...


    # note the SVN number is now included

    jlh@MacBook-XNOR trunk % apl --version
    BUILDTAG:
    ---------
        Project:        GNU APL
        Version / SVN:  1.8 / 1439M
        Build Date:     2021-02-22 18:01:34 UTC
        Build OS:       Darwin 19.6.0 x86_64   
        config.status:  '--includedir=/opt/local/' '--with-sqlite3=/opt/local/' '--with-postgresql=no'
        Archive SVN:    1433
    jlh@MacBook-XNOR trunk %

----

    ⍝ Load the workspace made by the version with a null SVN archive number

          )load hello
    WARNING: this workspace was )SAVEd with a VERY old SVN version of GNU APL.
    Expect problems, in particular when the )SI was not clear.
    In case of problems, please try )COPY instead of )LOAD.
    DOMAIN ERROR+


    ⍝ overwrite with a new one, the problem is gone.

    immediate_execution() caught APL error 0x50004 (DOMAIN ERROR)
          ∇hello
    [1] 'Hello World!'
    [2] ∇
          )wsid
    IS CLEAR WS
          )wsid hello
    WAS CLEAR WS
          )save
    2021-02-22  13:05:49 (GMT-5)  hello
          )clear
    CLEAR WS
          )load hello
    SAVED 2021-02-22 13:05:49 (GMT-5)
          hello
    Hello World!

================================================================

2) Quirk: Sqlite3 error message comes and goes

To follow is a screen log in which apl was loaded four times. Every other load emits an error messages as follows:

1st load: No connection error message
2st load: ::connect() to supposedly existing APserver failed: Invalid argument
               Svar_DB not connected in Svar_DB::is_registered_id()
3rd load: No connection error message
4st load: ::connect() to supposedly existing APserver failed: Invalid argument
               Svar_DB not connected in Svar_DB::is_registered_id(

================================================================

jlh@MacBook-XNOR trunk % apl

                    ______ _   __ __  __    ___     ____   __
                   / ____// | / // / / /   /   |   / __ \ / /
                  / / __ /  |/ // / / /   / /| |  / /_/ // /
                 / /_/ // /|  // /_/ /   / ___ | / ____// /___
                 \____//_/ |_/ \____/   /_/  |_|/_/    /_____/

                    Welcome to GNU APL version 1.8 / 1439M

                Copyright (C) 2008-2020  Dr. Jürgen Sauermann
                       Banner by FIGlet: www.figlet.org

                This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
                          for details run: apl --gpl.

     This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
         according to the GNU Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.

      )off

Goodbye.
Session duration: 5.44214 seconds
jlh@MacBook-XNOR trunk % apl
::connect() to supposedly existing APserver failed: Invalid argument

                    ______ _   __ __  __    ___     ____   __
                   / ____// | / // / / /   /   |   / __ \ / /
                  / / __ /  |/ // / / /   / /| |  / /_/ // /
                 / /_/ // /|  // /_/ /   / ___ | / ____// /___
                 \____//_/ |_/ \____/   /_/  |_|/_/    /_____/

                    Welcome to GNU APL version 1.8 / 1439M

                Copyright (C) 2008-2020  Dr. Jürgen Sauermann
                       Banner by FIGlet: www.figlet.org

                This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
                          for details run: apl --gpl.

     This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
         according to the GNU Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.

Svar_DB not connected in Svar_DB::is_registered_id()
      )off

Goodbye.
Session duration: 7.12709 seconds
jlh@MacBook-XNOR trunk % apl

                    ______ _   __ __  __    ___     ____   __
                   / ____// | / // / / /   /   |   / __ \ / /
                  / / __ /  |/ // / / /   / /| |  / /_/ // /
                 / /_/ // /|  // /_/ /   / ___ | / ____// /___
                 \____//_/ |_/ \____/   /_/  |_|/_/    /_____/

                    Welcome to GNU APL version 1.8 / 1439M

                Copyright (C) 2008-2020  Dr. Jürgen Sauermann
                       Banner by FIGlet: www.figlet.org

                This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
                          for details run: apl --gpl.

     This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
         according to the GNU Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.

      )off

Goodbye.
Session duration: 9.30464 seconds
jlh@MacBook-XNOR trunk % apl
::connect() to supposedly existing APserver failed: Invalid argument

                    ______ _   __ __  __    ___     ____   __
                   / ____// | / // / / /   /   |   / __ \ / /
                  / / __ /  |/ // / / /   / /| |  / /_/ // /
                 / /_/ // /|  // /_/ /   / ___ | / ____// /___
                 \____//_/ |_/ \____/   /_/  |_|/_/    /_____/

                    Welcome to GNU APL version 1.8 / 1439M

                Copyright (C) 2008-2020  Dr. Jürgen Sauermann
                       Banner by FIGlet: www.figlet.org

                This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
                          for details run: apl --gpl.

     This program is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
         according to the GNU Public License (GPL) version 3 or later.

Svar_DB not connected in Svar_DB::is_registered_id()

================================================================
3) Mystery Quad-Plot usage

All attempts to invoke ⎕PLOT result in a SYNTAX ERROR.

      ⎕plot ''
SYNTAX ERROR
      ⎕PLOT
      ^

      ⎕XYZ
VALUE ERROR
      ⎕X YZ
         ^

I note that this behavior is expected for ⎕RE if libpcre2 is absent when gnu-apl is compiled...

SYNTAX ERROR
      ⎕RE
      ^
      'abc' ⎕RE 'aaaaabcccc'
SYNTAX ERROR+
      'abc' ⎕RE 'aaaaabcccc'


Does this behavior indicate some prerequisites are missing for ⎕PLOT to work?


================================================================

4) Bug?: ⎕SI for non function execution errors?

4.1) It appears many (all?) errors cause push a event State Indicator. Other apl interpreters I've used do not push events such as value errors or domain errors on the State Indicator. Is this intended behavior?

4.2) The GNU APL info page indicates ⎕si's arguments include 5 and 6, but these return errors on my version. Is this a documentation error?


⍝ clear workspace

      )si
      ⎕si 1
 ◊
      ⎕si 2
0
      ⎕si 3
 ◊[0]
      ⎕si 4
 ⎕si 4
      ⎕si 5
DOMAIN ERROR
      ⎕SI 5
      ^

⍝ ?? ⎕SI 5 is supposed to be valid
      )si
⋆

⍝ ?? now the state indicator is non-null

      ⎕si 6
DOMAIN ERROR
      ⎕SI 6
      ^
      )si
⋆
⋆

⍝ ?? now the state indicator has to elements?

      xyzzy
VALUE ERROR
      xyzzy
      ^
      )si
⋆
⋆
⋆
      ⎕si 1
 ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
      ⎕si 2
0 0 0 0
      ⎕si 3
 ◊[0] ◊[0] ◊[0] ◊[0]
      ⎕si 4
       ⎕SI 5       ⎕SI 6       xyzzy ⎕si 4
      ⎕si 5
DOMAIN ERROR
      ⎕SI 5
      ^
      ⎕si 6
DOMAIN ERROR
      ⎕SI 6
      ^