Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
XP is just a number
 
PerlMonks  

Re^4: Multi-stage flip-flop? ( till() - proof of concept)

by RonW (Parson)
on Dec 12, 2014 at 20:23 UTC ( [id://1110211]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to Re^3: Multi-stage flip-flop? ( till() - proof of concept)
in thread Multi-stage flip-flop?

(Updated to add explanation of the error in the scalar test.)

I added tests for code references and scalars as conditions:

sub c3 { print "Evaluating condition 3\n"; /gamma/; } sub c4 { print "Evaluating condition 4\n"; /omega/; } while (<DATA>) { chomp; mff(qr/alpha/ => \&s1, qr/beta/ => \&s2, \&c3 => \&s3, c4() ) or print "*:$_\n"; }

In the above, a code ref to c3 is passed. c4, however, is called and its result, a scalar, is passed.

The results:

Evaluating condition 4 *:This is Evaluating condition 4 1:the alpha Evaluating condition 4 1:but not Evaluating condition 4 1:the omega Evaluating condition 4 2:Now the beta Evaluating condition 4 Evaluating condition 3 2:progressing to Evaluating condition 4 Evaluating condition 3 *:the gamma Evaluating condition 4 *:and finally Evaluating condition 4 *:the omega Evaluating condition 4 *:Did this work?

c3, which was passed as a code ref, was evaluated only in state 2, as expected. So, conditions passed as code refs do work.

c4, because it is called before calling mff, is evaluated every iteration, as expected. However, there is an error: mff transitioned to the "inactive" state too soon.

Update: changing the call to c4 to !!c4() "fixed" the test. The !! imposes scalar context on the call to c4. (It also "imposes" boolean context. Note that +c4() or -c4() would also have worked.)

Note: LanX raises a valid point: "What if a test returns a reference?" That depends on what the reference points to. If a scalar, then the scalar value is tested. If a regex, it is evaluated against $_. If code, it is evaluated and its return value tested. If another reference, that reference is treated as a scalar.1 If anything else, mff croaks with the message "Unsupported type".

I think flip-flop ( .. ) handles refs to scalars, regexen and code the same. Given that ref(ref(any)) eq 'SCALAR', I suspect it handles refs to refs the same as scalars. Refs to anything else, I don't know. More testing needed.

---

1 I tested print ref(ref(1)) and print ref(ref(qr/foo/)) and print ref(ref(sub { print 1; })) and several others. Each time, the result was SCALAR

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://1110211]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others admiring the Monastery: (2)
As of 2024-04-26 03:24 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found