From: David Bremner <david@tethera.net>
To: Hannu Hartikainen <hannu.hartikainen@gmail.com>, notmuch@notmuchmail.org
Subject: Re: Early preview of s-expression based query parser
Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2021 16:43:02 -0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87fswb76ih.fsf@tethera.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <60f190f8.1c69fb81.7e7d2.40d1@mx.google.com>
Hannu Hartikainen <hannu.hartikainen@gmail.com> writes:
>
> But looking at the sexp parser and the implementation of logical
> connectors I can't help but think that isn't this patchset implementing
> a tiny subset of a lisp? And wouldn't a full embedded lisp be much, much
> more powerful?
I think the analogy here is between JSON, and JavaScript. Plenty of
programs find it useful to use JSON as an input format without embedding
JavaScript. That's not just because JavaScript is not everyone's
favourite programming language, but because a Turing complete input
language is a mixed blessing.
> I'd at least consider embedding something like s7 [0] or Janet [1],
> writing bindings for enough Xapian functionality, and then writing the
> rest in the lisp itself. That way you'd get a more powerful and
> extensible sexp implementation, and you'd implement most of it in a much
> more ergonomic language.
Since what I want to do is actually a fairly thin layer on top of the
Xapian API, it's not clear that writing the bindings would be less code
than the roughly 450 lines of C/C++ needed to parse the s-expressions.
We already face challenges maintaining bindings for Python and Ruby; I
suspect that finding people to work on bindings for fairly obscure
(defined by not being in Debian) lisp variants would not be easier.
Ditto for coding in said lisp in the notmuch core.
> Of course I don't really know Xapian and I'm not sure of the design
> goals of this sexp parser, but my experience with HoneySQL [2] tells me
> that building queries with a lisp from lisp data structures can be
> unbelievably powerful.
Sure, and one of the motivations is to be able to conveniently build
queries in emacs lisp (some other lisp would obviously work just as
well).
If someone wants to take on a more ambitious project involving a full
lisp, that probably makes the most sense as a client project that links
to notmuch. That leaves someone free to explore without waiting on our
somewhat ponderous development cycle.
d
prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-07-18 19:43 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-07-14 0:02 Early preview of s-expression based query parser David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 01/11] configure: optional library sfsexp David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 02/11] lib: split notmuch_query_create David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 03/11] lib: define notmuch_query_create_sexpr David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 04/11] CLI/search+address: support sexpr queries David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 05/11] lib/parse-sexp: parse 'and', 'not', 'or' David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 06/11] lib/parse-sexp: parse 'subject' David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 07/11] lib/parse-sexp: split terms in phrase mode David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 08/11] lib/parse-sexp: handle most fields David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 09/11] lib/parse-sexp: add error handling to internal API David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 10/11] lib/parse-sexp: add keyword arguments for fields David Bremner
2021-07-14 0:02 ` [PATCH 11/11] lib/parse-sexp: initial support for wildcard queries David Bremner
2021-07-16 14:00 ` Early preview of s-expression based query parser Hannu Hartikainen
2021-07-18 19:43 ` David Bremner [this message]
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