How do I get a callstack in Haskell? - debugging

I am trying to track down a non-exhaustive pattern in a libraries code. Specifically HDBC's mysql implementation. It is trying to match over types in my program and map them to mysql's types I believe. I can't seem to get a callstack for this error which means that since there are a number of parameters to the SQL query it is difficult to track down exactly what is causing it.
Is it possible to get a callstack in haskell so I would know which parameter was causing the error? Also I would think that this should be caught by the compiler since it should be able to look at my types and the patterns and make sure that there was a corresponding match.

You can use the GHCi debugger to identify where the exception is coming from.
I walk through a full example here.

You might also take a look at the Debug.Trace library.

Related

On the use of of Internal`Bag, and any official documentation?

(Mathematica version: 8.0.4)
lst = Names["Internal`*"];
Length[lst]
Pick[lst, StringMatchQ[lst, "*Bag*"]]
gives
293
{"Internal`Bag", "Internal`BagLength", "Internal`BagPart", "Internal`StuffBag"}
The Mathematica guidebook for programming By Michael Trott, page 494 says on the Internal context
"But similar to Experimental` context, no guarantee exists that the behavior and syntax of the functions will still be available in later versions of Mathematica"
Also, here is a mention of Bag functions:
Implementing a Quadtree in Mathematica
But since I've seen number of Mathematica experts here suggest Internal`Bag functions and use them themselves, I am assuming it would be sort of safe to use them in actual code? and if so, I have the following question:
Where can I find a more official description of these functions (the API, etc..) like one finds in documenation center? There is nothing now about them now
??Internal`Bag
Internal`Bag
Attributes[Internal`Bag]={Protected}
If I am to start using them, I find it hard to learn about new functions by just looking at some examples and trial and error to see what they do. I wonder if someone here might have a more complete and self contained document on the use of these, describe the API and such more than what is out there already or a link to such place.
The Internal context is exactly what its name says: Meant for internal use by Wolfram developers.
This means, among other things, the following things hold about anything you might find in there:
You most likely won't be able to find any official documentation on it, as it's not meant to be used by the public.
It's not necessarily as robust about invalid arguments. (Crashing the kernel can easily happen on some of them.)
The API may change without notice.
The function may disappear completely without notice.
Now, in practice some of them may be reasonably stable, but I would strongly advise you to steer away from them. Using undocumented APIs can easily leave you in for a lot of pain and a nasty surprise in the future.

How can one get a list of Mathematica's built-in global rewrite rules?

I understand that over a thousand built-in rewrite rules in Mathematica populate the global rules table by default. Is there any way to get Mathematica to give a full or even partial list of those rules?
The best way is to get a job at Wolfram Research.
Failing that, I think that for things not completely compiled into the kernel you can recover most of the rules/definitions. Look at
Attributes[fn]
where fn is the command that you're interested in. If it returns
{Protected, ReadProtected}
then there's something you can get a look at (although often it's just a MakeBoxes (formatting) definition or a AutoLoad/Stub type definition). To see what's there run
Unprotect[fn];
ClearAttributes[fn, ReadProtected];
??fn
Quite often you'll have to run an example of the command to load it if it was a stub. You'll also have to dig down from the user-facing commands to the back-end implementations.
Eventually you'll most likely reach a core command that is compiled into the kernel that you can not see the details of.
I previously mentioned this in tips for creating Graph diagrams and it got a mention in What is in your Mathematica tool bag?.
An good example, with a nice bite-sized and digestible bit of code is Experimental`AngularSlider[] mentioned in Circular/Angular slider. I'll leave it up to you to look at the code produced.
Another example is something like BoxWhiskerChart, where you need to call it once in order to load all of the code. Then you see that BoxWhiskerChart proceeds to call Charting`iBoxWhiskerChart which you'll have to unprotect to look at, etc...

Debugging user defined functions in XPath 3.0/Saxon

Is there any support for debugging xpath user-defined functions in the latest Saxon PE? I've used the trace function, but it seems to work in some contexts and not in others. I'm sure there's a logic to that, but I don't understand it. I'm really looking for something simple like something akin to <xsl:message>.
Thanks in advance.
I suspect your calls on trace() are working, but the output is confusing because of lazy evaluation, which means that things are often evaluated in a different order from what you expect. In fact, the optimizer can sometimes rearrange the expressions you write in your source into something quite different.
Have you tried the debuggers in tools like Stylus Studio or oXygen? Typically these disable some optimizations, making the sequence of execution more comprehensible.

Cross version line matching

I'm considering how to do automatic bug tracking and as part of that I'm wondering what is available to match source code line numbers (or more accurate numbers mapped from instruction pointers via something like addr2line) in one version of a program to the same line in another. (Assume everything is in some kind of source control and is available to my code)
The simplest approach would be to use a diff tool/lib on the files and do some math on the line number spans, however this has some limitations:
It doesn't handle cross file motion.
It might not play well with lines that get changed
It doesn't look at the information available in the intermediate versions.
It provides no way to manually patch up lines when the diff tool gets things wrong.
It's kinda clunky
Before I start diving into developing something better:
What already exists to do this?
What features do similar system have that I've not thought of?
Why do you need to do this? If you use decent source version control, you should have access to old versions of the code, you can simply provide a link to that so people can see the bug in its original place. In fact the main problem I see with this system is that the bug may have already been fixed, but your automatic line tracking code will point to a line and say there's a bug there. Seems this system would be a pain to build, and not provide a whole lot of help in practice.
My suggestion is: instead of trying to track line numbers, which as you observed can quickly get out of sync as software changes, you should decorate each assertion (or other line of interest) with a unique identifier.
Assuming you're using C, in the case of assertions, this could be as simple as changing something like assert(x == 42); to assert(("check_x", x == 42)); -- this is functionally identical, due to the semantics of the comma operator in C and the fact that a string literal will always evaluate to true.
Of course this means that you need to identify a priori those items that you wish to track. But given that there's no generally reliable way to match up source line numbers across versions (by which I mean that for any mechanism you could propose, I believe I could propose a situation in which that mechanism does the wrong thing) I would argue that this is the best you can do.
Another idea: If you're using C++, you can make use of RAII to track dynamic scopes very elegantly. Basically, you have a Track class whose constructor takes a string describing the scope and adds this to a global stack of currently active scopes. The Track destructor pops the top element off the stack. The final ingredient is a static function Track::getState(), which simply returns a list of all currently active scopes -- this can be called from an exception handler or other error-handling mechanism.

Evaluating expressions using Visual Studio 2005 SDK rather than automation's Debugger::GetExpression

I'm looking into writing an addin (or package, if necessary) for Visual Studio 2005 that needs watch window type functionality -- evaluation of expressions and examination of the types. The automation facilities provide
Debugger::GetExpression, which is useful enough, but the information
provided is a bit crude.
From looking through the docs, it sounds like an
IDebugExpressionContext2 would be more useful. With one of these it
looks as if I can get more information from an expression -- detailed
information about the type and any members and so on and so forth, without having everything come through as strings.
I can't find any way of actually getting a IDebugExpressionContext2,
though! IDebugProgramProvider2 sort of looks relevant, in that I
could start with IDebugProgramProvider2::GetProviderProcessData and
then slowly drill down until reaching something that can supply my
expression context -- but I'll need to supply a port to this, and it's
not clear how to retrieve the port corresponding to the current debug
session. (Even if I tried every port, it's not obvious how to tell
which port is the right one...)
I'm becoming suspicious that this simply isn't a supported use case, but with any luck I've simply missed something crashingly obvious.
Can anybody help?
By using IDebugExpressionContext you'll ultamitely end up getting ahold of an instance of IDebugProperty. This interface is implemented by the Expression Evaluator service. This is, typically, a language specific service. It's designed to abstract out the language specific details of evaluating an expression. It understands much higher level commands like "Evaluate", and inspection.
I don't think you're going to get what you're looking for though because you can't get ahold of any kind of type object this way. Nearly all of the inspection methods return their results in String form. For example you won't get the type Int32 but instead the string "int". This makes type inspection next to impossible.
I don't believe what you're trying is a supported case. The type system being evaluated doesn't exist in the current process. It exists in the debuggee process and is fairly difficult to get access to.
There's a hack you could do to get more information about the type of a variable you've evaluated using Debugger::GetExpression method.
You could evaluate "AppDomain.CurrentDomain.GetAssemblies()" to get all the assemblies loaded into the debugee, and cache them in your add-in. You may also need to listen for new assemblies being loaded onto the AppDomain.
Then, run the following:
Expression myExpression = Debugger.GetExpression(...);
Expression typeRefExpression = Debugger.GetExpression("typeof(" + myExpression.Type + ").FullName"
once you have the TypeFullName, you can search inside your assemblies cache for a matching System.Type, and once you have that, you can dig into it all you want using the standart Reflection API.
Note that this will only work in C#, because of its "typeof" keyword. You'll have to use a different keyword for VB.Net, for example.

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