Day 0 - Unboxing and Exploration
Day 0 - Unboxing and Exploration
Get, Set, Go!!!
Obviously the first thing I need to do is, to unbox the goodies. For me, it's just brew install elixir and that's it. I will try out my Linux machine tomorrow. Moving on…
The Editor
Vim's been good to me for the past decade and I see no reason why I should not use it. A quick googling introduced me to alchemist.vim and vim-elixir. I'm guessing the former does autocompletion and stuff while the latter is for syntax highlighting.
I'm also liking Visual Studio Code a lot these days so might as well go and set it up too. I think the command I'm looking for is ext install vscode-elixir. Done. Though I don't think I'll be using the editor much today.
The Shell
Here's the fun part. I like languages with REPLs, and those that encourage the use of it by giving some nice helpers built-in. After firing up the iex command, it seems to me that Elixir has awesome support for it. Just go ahead and try typing h() in the shell and you'll see what I mean.
One thing I noticed is the naming of the form xxx/n (i.e. pwd/0, r/1). A quick googling later, I see it's a function/arity pair Erlang guys use. Does that mean no variadic argument for Elixir?
Anyway, one of the things we Pythonistas are used to is the help() and dir() functions. Is there a way to do it in Elixir? The h/0 and h/1 are your friends for the former, and dot(.) + TAB for the latter. So, if I do a h(List) (or h List) in the shell, then I'd see good old documentation of List. Parentheses are optional for function calls, a little Ruby envy I always had. Awesome! But I still need to explore if I can get a list of methods of a particular module (That's what they call it?) like Python does with dir(). I can get it by <module>.__info__(:functions) expression. Let's try: List.__info__(:functions). Like a charm.
How do I get out? CTRL+C does it for Elixir shell. That's exit!
Exploration
This is where I fire up the shell and start playing. The first thing I need to see is how I get to assign stuff. That's easy, just do a variable_name = value. No let, var, val etc. Since Elixir is a functional programming language, the first thing I'd look for is, well, functions? Let's see,
odd? = fn(n) -> rem(n, 2) == 1 end
even? = fn n -> not odd?.(n) end
IO.puts odd?.(11) #=> true
IO.puts even?.(11) #=> false
Despite knowing it, I did end up calling the function as odd?(11). It seems that Elixir anonymous functions need a .() for the arguments to be applied. True and False are just true/false. There's a convenient shortcut for it too:
odd? = &(rem(&1, 2) == 1)
event? = &(not odd?.(&1))
right_triangle? = &(&1*&1 == &2*&2 + &3*&3)
Sort of like Clojure's #(odd? %1). Convenient. But how do I make stuff that I can call without the parenthesis? Define a named function inside a module:
defmodule OddEven do
def odd? n do
rem(n, 2) == 1
end
def even? n do
not odd? n
end
end
Oh, and comments begin # with a hash
It is a common syntax pattern of Elixir to have constructs like <something> <expression> do <body> end it seems. Let's take a look at if:
defmodule LeapYear do
def leap_year? year do
if rem(n, 400) == 0 do
return true
end
if rem(n, 100) == 0 do
return false
end
if rem(n, 4) == 0 do
return true
end
false
end
end
See what I mean? But Elixir is a very pattern-happy language, so there's another way of doing it:
defmodule LeapYear do
def leap_year?(year) when rem(year, 400) == 0 do
true
end
def leap_year?(year) when rem(year, 100) == 0 do
false
end
def leap_year?(year) when rem(year, 4) == 0 do
true
end
def leap_year? year do
false
end
end
It's like those piecewise defined functions we did at school.
We skimmed conditions, let's loop. I didn't see any C-style for equivalent yet. And I'm not supposed to since Elixir doesn't mutate things. Instead I get recursion:
defmodule Fibonacci do
def compute n do
if n <= 1 do
n
else
compute(n - 1) + compute(n - 2)
end
end
def range n do
for i <- 1..n do
compute(i)
end
end
end
So we have a foreach-ish construct. It's called comprehension and is better viewed as for i <- <range> do: .... The something do body end-s have a short form of something, do: ... it seems. And instead of the if as base case in compute, could we instead use that piecewise defined thingy?
defmodule Fibonacci do
def compute(n) when n <= 1 do
n
end
def compute(n) do
compute(n - 1) + compute(n - 2)
end
def range(n) do
for i <- 1..n, do: compute i
end
end
An interesting thing about for comprehensions is that you can put conditions in the comma separated values, or multiple iterations too, take for example, this one:
# Can you tell me what this yields?
triplets = for a <- 1..10, b <- 1..10, c <- 1..10, c*c = a*a + b*b, do: {a, b, c}
This brings us to composite types. It's safe to assume that List and Map types exist. And there's a Tuple too. There's more, obviously.
# Lists
lost_numbers = [4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42]
Enum.at(lost_numbers, 0) #=> 4
Enum.map(lost_numbers, fn n -> n*n end) #=> Square each of lost numbers
Enum.reduce(lost_numbers, &(&1 + &2)) #=> Find the sum of lost numbers
42 in lost_numbers #=> true
# MAPS
lost_candidates = %{
4 => "Locke",
8 => "Hugo",
15 => "Sawyer",
16 => "Sayid",
23 => "Jack",
42 => "Kwon",
}
Dict.keys(lost_candidates) == lost_numbers #=> true
Dict.values(lost_candidates) #=> ["Locke", "Hugo", "Sawyer", "Sayid", "Jack", "Kwon"]
Dict.put(lost_candidates, 47, "Mafinar") #=> Returns a new Dict with me with number 47
Dict.get(lost_candidates, 4) #=> "Locke"
lost_candidates[23] #=> "Jack"
Looks to me like Elixir calls module functions a lot. It's not lost_candidates.keys but Dict.keys lost_candidates, not lost_numbers.at(0) but Enum.at lost_numbers, 0. The first argument being lost_numbers can have an important impact:
# Square the lost_numbers, then find the odd ones, then spit out the product.
square = fn n -> n*n end
odd? = fn n -> rem(n, 2) == 1 end
product = fn a, b -> a * b end
Enum.reduce(Enum.filter(Enum.map(lost_numbers, square), odd?), product)
So, the map gives out the squared numbers, and feeds it as the first argument to the filter, which in turn spits the odd numbers and becomes the first argument of the reduce function. Instead, why not do a pipe? Remember those UNIX | constructs?
square = fn n -> n*n end
odd? = fn n -> rem(n, 2) == 1 end
product = fn a, b -> a * b end
lost_numbers |> Enum.map(square) |> Enum.filter(odd?) |> Enum.reduce(product)
I have always loved Clojure's threading macros. Looks like Elixir has one too. And it looks awesome with Firacode ligatures!
I must admit, I was a little confused with some of the Map examples I saw, %{ 2 => "Two"} works but %{2: "Two"} spits out an error. And what's with this [:x 25, :y 30] thingy? Looks like I need to inspect the APIs better and get a good understanding of Atoms and Tuples.
Okay then
This was just random scribbles on my part, hence the day 0 bit. I just wanted to do a quick run down on Elixir and see how things fall and write-up whatever came out. And I must say, Elixir seems to have potential of being a super fun language. So far, it seemed braing and sanity friendly to me. And I find the code beautiful too. I'm glad I took it.
I am tired right now. That's all exploration for me that I'd write about. I'll just go and explore more (i.e string, structs etc) on my own and share it tomorrow?