Tutorial

Jacinda is well-suited to processing the output of Unix tools: regular expressions scan for relevant output and one can split on separators.

There is additionally support for filters, maps and folds that are familiar to functional programmers.

Language

Patterns + Implicits, Streams

In Jacinda, one writes a pattern and an expression defined on matching lines, viz.

{% <pattern>}{<expr>}

This defines a stream of expressions.

One can search a file for all occurrences of a string:

ja '{% /Bloom/}{`0}' -i ulysses.txt

`0 here functions like $0 in AWK: it means the whole line. So this would print all lines that match the pattern Bloom.

We could imitate fd with, say:

ls -1 -R | ja '{% /\.hs$/}{`0}'

This would print all Haskell source files in the current directory.

There is another form,

{<expr>}{<expr>}

where the initial expression is of boolean type, possibly involving the line context. An example:

{#`0>110}{`0}

This defines a stream of lines that are more than 110 bytes (# is ‘tally’, it returns the length of a string).

There is also a syntax that defines a stream on all lines,

{|<expr>}

So {| `0 } would define a stream of text corresponding to the lines in the file.

Fold

To count lines with the word “Bloom”:

ja '(+)|0 {% /Bloom/}{1}' -i ulysses.txt

Note the fold, |. It is a ternary operator taking (+), 0, and {%/Bloom/}{1} as arguments. The general syntax is:

<expr>|<expr> <expr>

It takes a binary operator, a seed, and a stream and returns an expression.

There is also |>, which folds without a seed.

Custom Field Separators

Like AWK, Jacinda allows us to define custom field separators:

printenv | ja -F= '{% /^PATH/}{`2}'

This splits on = and matches lines beginning with PATH, returning the second field—in this case, the value of PATH.

Map

Suppose we wish to count the lines in a file.

(+)|0 {|1}

This uses aforementioned {|<expr>} syntax. It this defines a stream of 1s for each line, and takes its sum.

We could also do the following:

(+)|0 [:1"$0

$0 is the stream of all lines. [: is the constant operator, a -> b -> a, so [:1 sends anything to 1.

" maps over a stream. So the above maps 1 over every line and takes the sum.

Functions

We could abstract away sum in the above example like so:

let val
  sum := [(+)|0 x]
in sum {% /Bloom/}{1} end

In Jacinda, one can define functions with a dfn syntax in, like in APL. We do not need to bind x; the variables x and y are implicit. Since [(+)|0 x] only mentions x, it is treated as a unary function.

[y] is treated as binary. Thus, [y]|>$0 prints the last line.

Note also that := is used for definition. The general syntax is

let (val <name> := <expr>)* in <expr> end

Lambdas

There is syntactical support for lambdas;

\x. (+)|0 x

would be equivalent to [(+)|0 x].

Zips

The syntax is:

, <expr> <expr> <expr>

One could (for instance) calculate population density:

, (%) $5: $6:

The postfix : parses the column based on inferred type; here it parses as a float.

Scans

The syntax is:

<expr> ^ <expr> <expr>

Scans are like folds, except that the intermediate value is tracked at each step. One could define a stream containing line numbers for a file with:

(+)^0 [:1"$0

(this is the same as {|ix})

Prior

Jacinda has a binary operator, \., like q’s each prior or J’s dyadic infix. One could write:

succDiff := [(-) \. x]

to track successive differences.

Currying

Jacinda allows partially applied (curried) functions; one could write

succDiff := ((-)\.)

Deduplicate

Jacinda has stream deduplication built in with the ~. operator.

~.$0

This is far better than sort | uniq as it preserves order; it is equivalent to !a[$0]++ in AWK.

Filter

We can filter an extant stream with #., viz.

(>110) #. $1:i

#. takes as its left argument a unary function returning a boolean.

[#x>110] #. $0

would filter to those lines >110 bytes wide.

Formatting Output

One can format output with sprintf, which works like printf in AWK or C.

As an example,

{|sprintf '%i: %s' (ix.`0)}

would display a file annotated with line numbers. Note the atypical syntax for tuples, we use . as a separator rather than ,.

Reporting

One can print a stream and a summary value (usually the result of a fold):

$1 $> (+)|0 $1:

Try:

seq 10000 | ja '$1 $> (+)|0 $1:'

Libraries

There is a syntax for functions:

fn sum(x) :=
  (+)|0 x;

fn drop(n, str) :=
  let val l := #str
    in substr str n l end;

Note the := and also the semicolon at the end of the expression that is the function body.

Since Jacinda has support for higher-order functions, one could write:

fn any(p, xs) :=
  (||)|#f p"xs;

fn all(p, xs) :=
  (&)|#t p"xs;

File Includes

One can @include files.

As an example, one could write:

@include'lib/string.jac'

fn path(x) :=
  intercalate '\n' (splitc x ':');

path"$0

intercalate is defined in lib/string.jac.

In-Place File Modification

We could trim whitespace from lines with:

(sub1 /\s+$/ ⍬)"$0

sub1 is like AWK’s sub and only substitutes the first occurrence. ⍬ is zilde, and can be used to represent an empty string or vector.

Jacinda does not modify files in-place so one would need to use sponge, viz.

ja '(sub1 /\s+$/ ⍬)¨$0' -i FILE | sponge FILE

Prelude

or := [(||)|#f x]

and := [(&)|#t x]

count := [(+)|0 [:1"x]

#t and #f are boolean literals.

System Interaction

Jacinda ignores any line beginning with #!, thus one could write a script like so:

#!/usr/bin/env -S ja run

fn path(x) :=
  ([x+'\n'+y])|> (splitc x ':');

path"$0

Examples

Vim Tags

Suppose we wish to generate vim tag files for our Jacinda programs. According to :help tags-file-format the desired format is

{tagname}       {TAB} {tagfile} {TAB} {tagaddress}

where {tagaddress} is an ex command. In fact, addresses defined by regular expressions are preferable as they become outdated less quickly.

As an example, suppose we have the function declaration

fn sum(x) :=
  (+)|0 x;

Then we need to extract sum and give a regex that points to where it is defined.

To do so:

fn mkEx(s) :=
  '/^' + s + '$/;';

fn processStr(s) :=
  let
    val line := split s /[ \(]+/
    val outLine := sprintf '%s\t%s\t%s' (line.2 . fp . mkEx s)
  in outLine end;

processStr"{%/fn +[[:lower:]][[:latin:]]*.*:=/}{`0}

Note the builtin split; according to the manpages it has type

split : Str -> Regex -> List Str

.2 is the syntax for accessing a list - line.2 extracts the second element.

Error Span

Suppose we wish to extract span information from compiler output for editor integration. Vim ships with a similar script, mve.awk, to present column information in a suitable format.

src/Jacinda/Backend/TreeWalk.hs:319:58: error:
    • The constructor ‘TyArr’ should have 3 arguments, but has been given 4
    • In the pattern:
        TyArr _ _ (TyArr _ (TyApp _ (TyB _ TyStream) _)) _
      In the pattern:
        TyArr _ _ (TyArr _ _ (TyArr _ (TyApp _ (TyB _ TyStream) _)) _)
      In the pattern:
        TBuiltin (TyArr _ _
                        (TyArr _ _ (TyArr _ (TyApp _ (TyB _ TyStream) _)) _))
                 Fold
    |
319 | eWith re i (EApp _ (EApp _ (EApp _ (TBuiltin (TyArr _ _ (TyArr _ _ (TyArr _ (TyApp _ (TyB _ TyStream) _)) _)) Fold) op) seed) stream) = foldWithCtx re i op seed stream
    |                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

To get what we want, we use match, which returns indices that match a regex - in our case, /\^+/, which spans the error location.

From the manpages, we see it has type

match : Str -> Regex -> Option (Int . Int)

:set fs:=/\|/;

fn printSpan(str) :=
  (sprintf '%i-%i')"(match str /\^+/);

printSpan:?{% /\|/}{`2}

Our program uses | as a field separator, thus `2 will present us with:

                                                          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

which is exactly the relevant bit.

First, note that " is used to map (sprintf '%i-%i') over (match ...). This works because match returns an Option, which is a functor. The builtin :? is mapMaybe. Thus, we define a stream

printSpan:?{% /\|/}{`2}

which only collects when printSpan returns a Some.

Unix Command-Line Tools

To get a flavor of Jacinda, see how it can be used in place of familiar tools:

wc

To count lines:

(+)|0 [:1"$0

or

[y]|0 {|ix}

To count bytes in a file:

(+)|0 [#x+1]"$0

or

(+)|0 {|#`0+1}

head

To emulate head -n60, for instance:

{ix<=60}{`0}

basename

fn fileName(x) :=
  x ~* 2 /([^\/]*\/)*(.*)/;

will remove the directory part of a filename.

tr

We can present the PATH with

echo $PATH | tr ':' '\n'

To do so in Jacinda, we use : as field separator, viz.

echo $PATH | ja -F: "{|[x+'\n'+y]|>\`$}"

`$ is all fields in a line, as a list.

uniq

fn step(acc, this) :=
  if this = acc->1
    then (this . None)
    else (this . Some this);

(->2):?step^(''.None) $0

This tracks the previous line in a state and only adds the current line to the stream if it is different.

nl

We can emulate nl -b a with:

{|sprintf '    %i  %s' (ix.`0)}

To count only non-blank lines:

fn empty(str) :=
  #str = 0;

fn step(acc, line) :=
  if empty line
    then (acc->1 . '')
    else (acc->1 + 1 . line);

fn process(x) :=
  if !empty (x->2)
    then sprintf '    %i\t%s' x
    else '';

process"step^(0 . '') $0

We could write process as

fn process(x) :=
  ?!empty (x->2); sprintf '    %i\t%s' x; '';

using the laconic syntax for conditionals, ?<bool>;<expr>;<expr>

Data Processing

CSV Processing

Vaccine Effectiveness

As an example, NYC publishes weighted data on vaccine breakthroughs.

We can download it:

curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nychealth/coronavirus-data/master/latest/now-weekly-breakthrough.csv -o /tmp/now-weekly-breakthrough.csv

And then process its columns with ja using CSV mode:

ja --csv ',[1.0-x%y] {ix>1}{`5:} {ix>1}{`11:}' -i /tmp/now-weekly-breakthrough.csv

As of writing:

0.8793436293436293
0.8524501884760366
0.8784741144414169
0.8638045891931903
0.8644207066557108
0.8572567783094098
0.8475274725274725
0.879263670817542
0.8816131830008673
0.8846732911773563
0.8974564390146205
0.9692181407757029

This extracts the 5th and 11th columns (discarding headers), and then computes effectiveness.

Inflation

We start with New Zealand’s food price index:

curl -O https://www.stats.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/Food-price-index/Food-price-index-September-2023/Download-data/food-price-index-september-2023-weighted-average-prices.csv

Then:

ja --csv '(%)\. {%/Apple/}{`3:}'

Machinery

Typeclasses

Under the hood, Jacinda has typeclasses, inspired by Haskell. These are used to disambiguate operators and witness with an implementation.

The language does not allow custom typeclasses.

Functor

The map operator " works on all functors, not just streams. Stream, List, and Option are instances.

IsPrintf

The IsPrintf typeclass is used to type sprintf; strings, integers, floats, booleans, and tuples of such are members.

sprintf '%i' 3

and

sprintf '%s-%i' ('str' . 2)

are both valid.

Row Types

The ->n accessors work on all applicable tuples, so

(a.b.c)->2

and

(a.b)->2

are both valid.

Moreover,

(a.b)->3

will be caught during typechecking.