Brainstorming Wisp and Guile for financial bookkeeping

Brainstorming Wisp and Guile for financial bookkeeping

[Christine Lemmer-Webber]

This isn't actual software, it was just me looking at a pile of
Beancount / Ledger files I've made over the years and thinking,
"what if this was just a DSL on top of Guile?"

And then I also thought: "what if instead of making a custom DSL,
we just used Wisp?"

Here's I think how you might write an entry:


* 2020 03 30 "Starting balance"
  Assets:Retirement:IRA               : USD 1321 84
  Equity:OpeningBalance

Which would translate to:

(* 2020 03 30 "Starting balance"
   (Assets:Retirement:IRA  (USD 1321 84))
   (Equity:OpeningBalance))


If we wanted to make it look like Ledger/Beancount, it would look more
like:

2020-03-30 * "Starting balance"
  Assets:Retirement:IRA                1321.84 USD 
  Equity:OpeningBalance

Actually, that's both valid Wisp and Beancount!  You could parse this
as:

(2020-03-30 * "Starting balance"
  (Assets:Retirement:IRA  (USD 1321.84))
  (Equity:OpeningBalance))


Except... IEEE floating point numbers aren't great for financial things,
so hence me thinking maybe you'd separate them (even though it looks
very yucky).  And I thought it would be nicer if the first thing was the
constructor, and I figured I might make the dates separate fields, but
you could switch most of these out in post-processing (with some risks
over the floating point stuff... notably risks Ledger also takes,
infamously).

Here's another example of Beancount syntax for asserting a balance:

  2020-01-03 balance Assets:Banking:Checking   7337.43 USD 

Yeah anyway you could read that in Wisp too.

As for special fields, eg check numbers, keywords could work:


* 2020 01 03 "Tangled Woodworking" ""
  #:check 1835
  #:invoice 2853
  Assets:Banking:Checking  : USD -4075.00
  Expenses:House:RepairsImprovements
  
(* 2020 01 03 "Tangled Woodworking" ""
   (#:check 1835)
   (#:invoice 2853)
   (Assets:Banking:Checking (USD -4075.00))
   (Expenses:House:RepairsImprovements))


or


* 2020 01 03 "Tangled Woodworking" ""
  . #:check 1835
  . #:invoice 2853
  Assets:Banking:Checking  : USD -4075.00
  Expenses:House:RepairsImprovements
  
(* 2020 01 03 "Tangled Woodworking" ""
   #:check 1835
   #:invoice 2853
   (Assets:Banking:Checking (USD -4075.00))
   (Expenses:House:RepairsImprovements))


Those dots wouldn't be needed if Arne hadn't reversed agreeing with me
that keywords should always be part of a previous expression without
needing that dot foo ;)

Anyway.  Just a thought.  I haven't written software for this.  I have
thought it could be nice to do my finances at the REPL though. :P
Feel free to steal this idea, or not...

 - Christine

Re: Brainstorming Wisp and Guile for financial bookkeeping

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

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Christine Lemmer-Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:

> 2020-03-30 * "Starting balance"
>   Assets:Retirement:IRA                1321.84 USD 
>   Equity:OpeningBalance

I wondered whether we could make this executable as it is, but for that
we’d have to create one procedure for every date.

Since accounts have to be declared with something like

account ArneBab:Assets:Autorenhonorar:epubli

creating a proc per account would actually give us some compile-time
validation.

import : ice-9 optargs


define USD 'USD
define-syntax-rule (account name)
  define* (name #:optional value currency)
    list (quote name) value currency
define (entry description
        account-name1 value1 currency1
        account-name2 value2 currency2)
  ;; do something useful
  . description


define-syntax date
  λ : x
    syntax-case x : *
      : _ * description account1 account2
        #' apply entry : cons description : append account1 account2


define-syntax-rule : 2020-03-30 args ...
  date args ...


;; Missing piece: Running
;; define-syntax-rule (the-date args ...) (date args ...)
;; for each possible date.



And actually implementing some state tracking …

This already works (but only returns "Starting balance"):


account Assets:Retirement:IRA
account Equity:OpeningBalance
2020-03-30 * "Starting balance"
  Assets:Retirement:IRA                1321.84 USD 
  Equity:OpeningBalance


Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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Re: Brainstorming Wisp and Guile for financial bookkeeping

[Daniel Tornabene]

sub'd!

On Wed, Oct 4, 2023 at 4:47 PM Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_bab@web.de>
wrote:

>
> Christine Lemmer-Webber <cwebber@dustycloud.org> writes:
>
> > 2020-03-30 * "Starting balance"
> >   Assets:Retirement:IRA                1321.84 USD
> >   Equity:OpeningBalance
>
> I wondered whether we could make this executable as it is, but for that
> we’d have to create one procedure for every date.
>
> Since accounts have to be declared with something like
>
> account ArneBab:Assets:Autorenhonorar:epubli
>
> creating a proc per account would actually give us some compile-time
> validation.
>
> import : ice-9 optargs
>
>
> define USD 'USD
> define-syntax-rule (account name)
>   define* (name #:optional value currency)
>     list (quote name) value currency
> define (entry description
>         account-name1 value1 currency1
>         account-name2 value2 currency2)
>   ;; do something useful
>   . description
>
>
> define-syntax date
>   λ : x
>     syntax-case x : *
>       : _ * description account1 account2
>         #' apply entry : cons description : append account1 account2
>
>
> define-syntax-rule : 2020-03-30 args ...
>   date args ...
>
>
> ;; Missing piece: Running
> ;; define-syntax-rule (the-date args ...) (date args ...)
> ;; for each possible date.
>
>
>
> And actually implementing some state tracking …
>
> This already works (but only returns "Starting balance"):
>
>
> account Assets:Retirement:IRA
> account Equity:OpeningBalance
> 2020-03-30 * "Starting balance"
>   Assets:Retirement:IRA                1321.84 USD
>   Equity:OpeningBalance
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Arne
> --
> Unpolitisch sein
> heißt politisch sein,
> ohne es zu merken.
> draketo.de
>