From: Basil Contovounesios via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>
To: "Mattias Engdegård" <mattias.engdegard@gmail.com>
Cc: 64127-done@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#64127: 30.0.50; mutate-constant warning with pure function
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2023 21:56:30 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87edm97qpt.fsf@epfl.ch> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <22FA3A9A-A113-437C-A338-15A2BA7ADA59@gmail.com> ("Mattias Engdegård"'s message of "Sat, 17 Jun 2023 19:03:23 +0200")
tags 64127 notabug wontfix
close 64127
quit
Mattias Engdegård [2023-06-17 19:03 +0200] wrote:
> 17 juni 2023 kl. 18.28 skrev Basil Contovounesios <contovob@tcd.ie>:
>
>> Which approach do you think the dash.el library in GNU ELPA should
>> follow? It generally defines nondestructive operations over lists, some
>> of which even claim in their docstring that they return a partial or
>> complete copy of their arguments (modulo the parts changed by the
>> operation).
>
> Its doc strings seem to talk a lot about how the functions returns a new this or
> a copy of that. Maybe that provides the licence to return a constant when those
> words are absent, or perhaps the users will just assume mutability in absence of
> stern warnings. I don't know how dash.el is used in practice, so perhaps it's
> prudent to stay off the `pure` declarations.
Done for some of the likelier candidates in
https://github.com/magnars/dash.el/commit/d5182da04c.
>> Is it okay for a pure function to say it returns a copy in its
>> docstring, with the onus lying on the caller to realise that a pure
>> function call may be byte-compiled to a runtime constant? Or should all
>> such functions be impurified?
>
> A pure function cannot in general be guaranteed to return an eq-unique
> value. By definition it will, if all its arguments are constants, be
> called at compile-time to generate a constant used in the program.
>
> There is nothing wrong with returning a newly created object from a
> `pure`-declared function, as long as reasonable steps are taken to prevent the
> returned value from being mutated. Depending on the context this can be as
> simple as not saying that it returns a new object.
Makes sense, thanks for elaborating.
--
Basil
prev parent reply other threads:[~2023-06-17 20:56 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2023-06-17 11:32 bug#64127: 30.0.50; mutate-constant warning with pure function Basil Contovounesios via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-17 11:58 ` Mattias Engdegård
2023-06-17 16:28 ` Basil Contovounesios via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors
2023-06-17 17:03 ` Mattias Engdegård
2023-06-17 20:56 ` Basil Contovounesios via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors [this message]
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87edm97qpt.fsf@epfl.ch \
--to=bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org \
--cc=64127-done@debbugs.gnu.org \
--cc=contovob@tcd.ie \
--cc=mattias.engdegard@gmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).