Finding Strings within Strings in ATS

[d4v3y_5c0n3s]

    I was searching through the prelude looking for a way to find a formatted string within another string in ATS, but there doesn't seem to be a built-in way to do this.  Before I make something myself, I just wanted to see what opinions there are on the best way to perform this operation in ATS.

    Do you think I should use the C standard library through ATS' ability to call inline C code?  Should I just loop through a strnptr and manually check the chars?  Personally, I want to try using linear streams here to take advantage of their low-memory overhead (and because I've fallen straight into the "once you have a hammer everything looks like a nail" trap with linear streams.)  But, I want to hear what others think, so please let me know which solution you think is best.

    As a side note, should we add more string manipulation capabilities to the prelude?  I don't know what Hongwei's stance on this is, but if he thinks it would be a good idea I'd be willing to contribute these functions to the prelude.

[gmhwxi]

I myself have been using the PCRE library:

https://github.com/githwxi/ATS-Postiats/tree/master/contrib/atscntrb/atscntrb-hx-libpcre

There is also the SDSTRING library available.

You are welcome to implement a library of string manipulation functions. And I am happy to

add it to https://github.com/githwxi/ATS-Postiats-contrib for now.

As for building an ecosystem for ATS3, I am thinking about a way for contributed packages to

be hosted on-line. Not much progress is made at this stage, though.

--Hongwei

[Elijah Stone]

On Sat, 27 Feb 2021, gmhwxi wrote:
> As for building an ecosystem for ATS3, I am thinking about a way for
> contributed packages to be hosted on-line. Not much progress is made at
> this stage, though.

Have you seen
https://github.com/vmchale/atspkg/blob/master/ats-pkg/README.md ?

[gmhwxi]

Thanks for the link. I will take a look.

[d4v3y_5c0n3s]

Thank you for the suggestions.  I decided to sidestep my need to _ for now.  While atscntrb-hx-libpcre seems like it would suit my needs, I'd rather not require people to install too many external libraries.  Is ATS3 suitable for writing libraries for currently?  Because if I were to implement string processing functions it would make the most since to do it for ATS3.

[gmhwxi]

Your question got me thinking :)

I feel that ATS3 is not yet suitable right now.

I am focusing on implementing a typechecker for linear and dependent types.

After that, I suppose I can polish it a bit and then make a release.

--Hongwei

[d4v3y_5c0n3s]

Cool!  I can't wait for the first release of ATS3, good luck and thanks!