List insert_at with empty list returns '\a'

[Bibek Pandey]

Hi all --

I'm getting a '\a' when trying to insert into an empty list.  Doesn't appear to be expected behavior.

$ iex
Erlang/OTP 19 [erts-8.0.2] [source-9503fff] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Interactive Elixir (1.3.2) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)
iex(1)> List.insert_at([], 0, 7)
'\a'
iex(2)> List.insert_at([], 1, 7)
'\a'
iex(3)> List.insert_at([], 2, 7)
'\a'
iex(4)> List.insert_at([3], 2, 7)
[3, 7]
iex(5)> List.insert_at([3], 0, 7)
[7, 3]
iex(6)> List.insert_at([3], 1, 7)
[3, 7]
iex(7)>

 
Thanks B

[Theron Boerner]

Lists are (sometimes) strings. \a is 7. Ergo, [7] == '\a'

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[Bibek Pandey]

That's right -- but feels like something changed as this was working okay for me a few days ago.  Anyhow thanks

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 5:20 PM, Theron Boerner <hunter...@gmail.com> wrote:

Lists are (sometimes) strings. \a is 7. Ergo, [7] == '\a'

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 7:15 PM Bibek Pandey <bib...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all --

I'm getting a '\a' when trying to insert into an empty list.  Doesn't appear to be expected behavior.

$ iex
Erlang/OTP 19 [erts-8.0.2] [source-9503fff] [64-bit] [smp:2:2] [async-threads:10] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Interactive Elixir (1.3.2) - press Ctrl+C to exit (type h() ENTER for help)
iex(1)> List.insert_at([], 0, 7)
'\a'
iex(2)> List.insert_at([], 1, 7)
'\a'
iex(3)> List.insert_at([], 2, 7)
'\a'
iex(4)> List.insert_at([3], 2, 7)
[3, 7]
iex(5)> List.insert_at([3], 0, 7)
[7, 3]
iex(6)> List.insert_at([3], 1, 7)
[3, 7]
iex(7)>

 
Thanks B

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[Louis Pilfold]

Hey

[7] == '\a'

Single quote strings are actually lists of characters, so when you have a list of numbers that can be treated as characters Elixir will print them as like so.

Cheers,
Louis

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[Ben Wilson]

You can read more about it in the getting started guides: http://elixir-lang.org/getting-started/binaries-strings-and-char-lists.html

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[Bibek Pandey]

Thanks folks.  I appreciate it

I guess logically I understand it and have before but I feel like I have some intuitive gap/resistance to really accept this (because I feel like I have run into this before).

In the spirit of Haskell, it would be interesting to have a Maybe type to wrap the List type.  So Maybe List could return a list, a single char or a list with a single num, or an absence of both.

http://learnyouahaskell.com/a-fistful-of-monads

The return type of insert_at is a list and so technically this works fine, but folks just have a lot of programmer word gravity and baggage -- LOL.  So even though '\a' is in fact [7] which is a list, `\a` in itself printed out doesn't look like a list.

Just my 2 --

Enjoy the Olympics!
B

[Onorio Catenacci]

For what it's worth @B, there's a good simple reason that this behaves the way it does.  

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/elixir-lang-talk/0xxH9HxdQnU/LHgK8elhEQAJ

TL;DR Erlang error codes are returned as char lists.  Hence defaulting to displaying char lists as text helps significantly with interfacing with Erlang. (Apologies if I'm summarizing incorrectly but that's my understanding). 

--

Onorio

[Ben Wilson]

Maybe type with list doesn't make any sense. For one thing the maybe type is Nothing | Some(a) but that isn't what we have here at all. Thus a Maybe list would be Nothing | Some(list), which doesn't cover the various single char and so on you talked about.

I think you're over thinking it. '\a' and [7] are just two different ways of writing exactly the same list.

On Monday, August 8, 2016 at 10:47:53 PM UTC-4, brpandey wrote:

[Bibek Pandey]

@BW  Yes, I'm probably overthinking it​. The below type defs are pretty straightforward

​ -- this is not a type issue at all -- ​

list() [any()]
charlist() [char()]
char() 0..0x10FFFF

Since the culprit for me here is the IO display -- I think the easiest solution is what @O is referencing (Thanks!) -->

iex(1)> IEx.configure inspect: [char_lists: false]
:ok
iex(2)> [7]
[7]

iex(3)> List.insert_at([], 2, 7)

[7]
iex(4)> :)