Author:	Andreas Rumpf
Version:	0.9.3

Introduction

"Object-oriented programming is an exceptionally bad idea which could only have originated in California." --Edsger Dijkstra

This document is a tutorial for the advanced constructs of the Nimrod programming language. Note that this document is somewhat obsolete as the manual contains many more examples of the advanced language features.

Pragmas

Pragmas are Nimrod's method to give the compiler additional information/ commands without introducing a massive number of new keywords. Pragmas are enclosed in the special {. and .} curly dot brackets. This tutorial does not cover pragmas. See the manual or user guide for a description of the available pragmas.

Object Oriented Programming

While Nimrod's support for object oriented programming (OOP) is minimalistic, powerful OOP technics can be used. OOP is seen as one way to design a program, not the only way. Often a procedural approach leads to simpler and more efficient code. In particular, prefering composition over inheritance is often the better design.

Objects

Like tuples, objects are a means to pack different values together in a structured way. However, objects provide many features that tuples do not: They provide inheritance and information hiding. Because objects encapsulate data, the T() object constructor should only be used internally and the programmer should provide a proc to initialize the object (this is called a constructor).

Objects have access to their type at runtime. There is an of operator that can be used to check the object's type:

type
  TPerson = object of TObject
    name*: string  # the * means that `name` is accessible from other modules
    age: int       # no * means that the field is hidden from other modules
  
  TStudent = object of TPerson # TStudent inherits from TPerson
    id: int                    # with an id field

var
  student: TStudent
  person: TPerson
assert(student of TStudent) # is true
# object construction:
student = TStudent(name: "Anton", age: 5, id: 2)

Object fields that should be visible from outside the defining module have to be marked by *. In contrast to tuples, different object types are never equivalent. New object types can only be defined within a type section.

Inheritance is done with the object of syntax. Multiple inheritance is currently not supported. If an object type has no suitable ancestor, TObject can be used as its ancestor, but this is only a convention. Objects that have no ancestor are implicitly final. You can use the inheritable pragma to introduce new object roots apart from system.TObject. (This is used in the GTK wrapper for instance.)

Note: Composition (has-a relation) is often preferable to inheritance (is-a relation) for simple code reuse. Since objects are value types in Nimrod, composition is as efficient as inheritance.

Mutually recursive types

Objects, tuples and references can model quite complex data structures which depend on each other; they are mutually recursive. In Nimrod these types can only be declared within a single type section. (Anything else would require arbitrary symbol lookahead which slows down compilation.)

Example:

type
  PNode = ref TNode # a traced reference to a TNode
  TNode = object
    le, ri: PNode   # left and right subtrees
    sym: ref TSym   # leaves contain a reference to a TSym
  
  TSym = object     # a symbol
    name: string    # the symbol's name
    line: int       # the line the symbol was declared in
    code: PNode     # the symbol's abstract syntax tree

Type conversions

Nimrod distinguishes between type casts and type conversions. Casts are done with the cast operator and force the compiler to interpret a bit pattern to be of another type.

Type conversions are a much more polite way to convert a type into another: They preserve the abstract value, not necessarily the bit-pattern. If a type conversion is not possible, the compiler complains or an exception is raised.

The syntax for type conversions is destination_type(expression_to_convert) (like an ordinary call):

proc getID(x: TPerson): int =
  TStudent(x).id

The EInvalidObjectConversion exception is raised if x is not a TStudent.

Object variants

Often an object hierarchy is overkill in certain situations where simple variant types are needed.

An example:

# This is an example how an abstract syntax tree could be modeled in Nimrod
type
  TNodeKind = enum  # the different node types
    nkInt,          # a leaf with an integer value
    nkFloat,        # a leaf with a float value
    nkString,       # a leaf with a string value
    nkAdd,          # an addition
    nkSub,          # a subtraction
    nkIf            # an if statement
  PNode = ref TNode
  TNode = object
    case kind: TNodeKind  # the ``kind`` field is the discriminator
    of nkInt: intVal: int
    of nkFloat: floatVal: float
    of nkString: strVal: string
    of nkAdd, nkSub:
      leftOp, rightOp: PNode
    of nkIf:
      condition, thenPart, elsePart: PNode

var n = PNode(kind: nkFloat, floatVal: 1.0)
# the following statement raises an `EInvalidField` exception, because
# n.kind's value does not fit:
n.strVal = ""

As can been seen from the example, an advantage to an object hierarchy is that no conversion between different object types is needed. Yet, access to invalid object fields raises an exception.

Methods

In ordinary object oriented languages, procedures (also called methods) are bound to a class. This has disadvantages:

Adding a method to a class the programmer has no control over is impossible or needs ugly workarounds.
Often it is unclear where the method should belong to: is join a string method or an array method?

Nimrod avoids these problems by not assigning methods to a class. All methods in Nimrod are multi-methods. As we will see later, multi-methods are distinguished from procs only for dynamic binding purposes.

Method call syntax

There is a syntactic sugar for calling routines: The syntax obj.method(args) can be used instead of method(obj, args). If there are no remaining arguments, the parentheses can be omitted: obj.len (instead of len(obj)).

This method call syntax is not restricted to objects, it can be used for any type:

echo("abc".len) # is the same as echo(len("abc"))
echo("abc".toUpper())
echo({'a', 'b', 'c'}.card)
stdout.writeln("Hallo") # the same as writeln(stdout, "Hallo")

(Another way to look at the method call syntax is that it provides the missing postfix notation.)

So "pure object oriented" code is easy to write:

import strutils

stdout.writeln("Give a list of numbers (separated by spaces): ")
stdout.write(stdin.readLine.split.map(parseInt).max.`$`)
stdout.writeln(" is the maximum!")

Properties

As the above example shows, Nimrod has no need for get-properties: Ordinary get-procedures that are called with the method call syntax achieve the same. But setting a value is different; for this a special setter syntax is needed:

type
  TSocket* = object of TObject
    FHost: int # cannot be accessed from the outside of the module
               # the `F` prefix is a convention to avoid clashes since
               # the accessors are named `host`

proc `host=`*(s: var TSocket, value: int) {.inline.} =
  ## setter of hostAddr
  s.FHost = value

proc host*(s: TSocket): int {.inline.} =
  ## getter of hostAddr
  s.FHost

var
  s: TSocket
s.host = 34  # same as `host=`(s, 34)

(The example also shows inline procedures.)

The [] array access operator can be overloaded to provide array properties:

type
  TVector* = object
    x, y, z: float

proc `[]=`* (v: var TVector, i: int, value: float) =
  # setter
  case i
  of 0: v.x = value
  of 1: v.y = value
  of 2: v.z = value
  else: assert(false)

proc `[]`* (v: TVector, i: int): float =
  # getter
  case i
  of 0: result = v.x
  of 1: result = v.y
  of 2: result = v.z
  else: assert(false)

The example is silly, since a vector is better modelled by a tuple which already provides v[] access.

Dynamic dispatch

Procedures always use static dispatch. For dynamic dispatch replace the proc keyword by method:

type
  PExpr = ref object of TObject ## abstract base class for an expression
  PLiteral = ref object of PExpr
    x: int
  PPlusExpr = ref object of PExpr
    a, b: PExpr

# watch out: 'eval' relies on dynamic binding
method eval(e: PExpr): int =
  # override this base method
  quit "to override!"

method eval(e: PLiteral): int = e.x
method eval(e: PPlusExpr): int = eval(e.a) + eval(e.b)

proc newLit(x: int): PLiteral = PLiteral(x: x)
proc newPlus(a, b: PExpr): PPlusExpr = PPlusExpr(a: a, b: b)

echo eval(newPlus(newPlus(newLit(1), newLit(2)), newLit(4)))

Note that in the example the constructors newLit and newPlus are procs because they should use static binding, but eval is a method because it requires dynamic binding.

In a multi-method all parameters that have an object type are used for the dispatching:

type
  TThing = object of TObject
  TUnit = object of TThing
    x: int

method collide(a, b: TThing) {.inline.} =
  quit "to override!"

method collide(a: TThing, b: TUnit) {.inline.} =
  echo "1"

method collide(a: TUnit, b: TThing) {.inline.} =
  echo "2"

var
  a, b: TUnit
collide(a, b) # output: 2

As the example demonstrates, invocation of a multi-method cannot be ambiguous: Collide 2 is preferred over collide 1 because the resolution works from left to right. Thus TUnit, TThing is preferred over TThing, TUnit.

Perfomance note: Nimrod does not produce a virtual method table, but generates dispatch trees. This avoids the expensive indirect branch for method calls and enables inlining. However, other optimizations like compile time evaluation or dead code elimination do not work with methods.

Exceptions

In Nimrod exceptions are objects. By convention, exception types are prefixed with an 'E', not 'T'. The system module defines an exception hierarchy that you might want to stick to. Exceptions derive from E_Base, which provides the common interface.

Exceptions have to be allocated on the heap because their lifetime is unknown. The compiler will prevent you from raising an exception created on the stack. All raised exceptions should at least specify the reason for being raised in the msg field.

A convention is that exceptions should be raised in exceptional cases: For example, if a file cannot be opened, this should not raise an exception since this is quite common (the file may not exist).

Raise statement

Raising an exception is done with the raise statement:

var
  e: ref EOS
new(e)
e.msg = "the request to the OS failed"
raise e

If the raise keyword is not followed by an expression, the last exception is re-raised. For the purpose of avoiding repeating this common code pattern, the template newException in the system module can be used:

raise newException(EOS, "the request to the OS failed")

Try statement

The try statement handles exceptions:

# read the first two lines of a text file that should contain numbers
# and tries to add them
var
  f: TFile
if open(f, "numbers.txt"):
  try:
    let a = readLine(f)
    let b = readLine(f)
    echo "sum: ", parseInt(a) + parseInt(b)
  except EOverflow:
    echo "overflow!"
  except EInvalidValue:
    echo "could not convert string to integer"
  except EIO:
    echo "IO error!"
  except:
    echo "Unknown exception!"
    # reraise the unknown exception:
    raise
  finally:
    close(f)

The statements after the try are executed unless an exception is raised. Then the appropriate except part is executed.

The empty except part is executed if there is an exception that is not explicitly listed. It is similar to an else part in if statements.

If there is a finally part, it is always executed after the exception handlers.

The exception is consumed in an except part. If an exception is not handled, it is propagated through the call stack. This means that often the rest of the procedure - that is not within a finally clause - is not executed (if an exception occurs).

If you need to access the actual exception object or message inside an except branch you can use the getCurrentException() and getCurrentExceptionMsg() procs from the system module. Example:

try:
  doSomethingHere()
except:
  let
    e = getCurrentException()
    msg = getCurrentExceptionMsg()
  echo "Got exception ", repr(e), " with message ", msg

Exception hierarchy

If you want to create your own exceptions you can inherit from E_Base, but you can also inherit from one of the existing exceptions if they fit your purpose. The exception tree is:

* E_Base
  * EAsynch
    * EControlC
  * ESynch
    * ESystem
      * EIO
      * EOS
        * EInvalidLibrary
    * EResourceExhausted
    * EOutOfMemory
    * EStackOverflow
  * EArithmetic
    * EDivByZero
    * EOverflow
  * EAccessViolation
  * EAssertionFailed
  * EInvalidValue
    * EInvalidKey
  * EInvalidIndex
  * EInvalidField
  * EOutOfRange
  * ENoExceptionToReraise
  * EInvalidObjectAssignment
  * EInvalidObjectConversion
  * EFloatingPoint
    * EFloatInvalidOp
    * EFloatDivByZero
    * EFloatOverflow
    * EFloatUnderflow
    * EFloatInexact
  * EDeadThread

See the system module for a description of each exception.

Annotating procs with raised exceptions

Through the use of the optional {.raises.} pragma you can specify that a proc is meant to raise a specific set of exceptions, or none at all. If the {.raises.} pragma is used, the compiler will verify that this is true. For instance, if you specify that a proc raises EIO, and at some point it (or one of the procs it calls) starts raising a new exception the compiler will prevent that proc from compiling. Usage example:

proc complexProc() {.raises: [EIO, EArithmetic].} =
  ...

proc simpleProc() {.raises: [].} =
  ...

Once you have code like this in place, if the list of raised exception changes the compiler will stop with an error specifying the line of the proc which stopped validating the pragma and the raised exception not being caught, along with the file and line where the uncaught exception is being raised, which may help you locate the offending code which has changed.

If you want to add the {.raises.} pragma to existing code, the compiler can also help you. You can add the {.effect.} pragma statement to your proc and the compiler will output all inferred effects up to that point (exception tracking is part of Nimrod's effect system). Another more roundabout way to find out the list of exceptions raised by a proc is to use the Nimrod doc2 command which generates documentation for a whole module and decorates all procs with the list of raised exceptions. You can read more about Nimrod's effect system and related pragmas in the manual.

Generics

Generics are Nimrod's means to parametrize procs, iterators or types with type parameters. They are most useful for efficient type safe containers:

type
  TBinaryTree[T] = object      # TBinaryTree is a generic type with
                               # with generic param ``T``
    le, ri: ref TBinaryTree[T] # left and right subtrees; may be nil
    data: T                    # the data stored in a node
  PBinaryTree*[T] = ref TBinaryTree[T] # type that is exported

proc newNode*[T](data: T): PBinaryTree[T] =
  # constructor for a node
  new(result)
  result.data = data

proc add*[T](root: var PBinaryTree[T], n: PBinaryTree[T]) =
  # insert a node into the tree
  if root == nil:
    root = n
  else:
    var it = root
    while it != nil:
      # compare the data items; uses the generic ``cmp`` proc
      # that works for any type that has a ``==`` and ``<`` operator
      var c = cmp(it.data, n.data)
      if c < 0:
        if it.le == nil:
          it.le = n
          return
        it = it.le
      else:
        if it.ri == nil:
          it.ri = n
          return
        it = it.ri

proc add*[T](root: var PBinaryTree[T], data: T) =
  # convenience proc:
  add(root, newNode(data))

iterator preorder*[T](root: PBinaryTree[T]): T =
  # Preorder traversal of a binary tree.
  # Since recursive iterators are not yet implemented,
  # this uses an explicit stack (which is more efficient anyway):
  var stack: seq[PBinaryTree[T]] = @[root]
  while stack.len > 0:
    var n = stack.pop()
    while n != nil:
      yield n.data
      add(stack, n.ri)  # push right subtree onto the stack
      n = n.le          # and follow the left pointer

var
  root: PBinaryTree[string] # instantiate a PBinaryTree with ``string``
add(root, newNode("hello")) # instantiates ``newNode`` and ``add``
add(root, "world")          # instantiates the second ``add`` proc
for str in preorder(root):
  stdout.writeln(str)

The example shows a generic binary tree. Depending on context, the brackets are used either to introduce type parameters or to instantiate a generic proc, iterator or type. As the example shows, generics work with overloading: the best match of add is used. The built-in add procedure for sequences is not hidden and is used in the preorder iterator.

Templates

Templates are a simple substitution mechanism that operates on Nimrod's abstract syntax trees. Templates are processed in the semantic pass of the compiler. They integrate well with the rest of the language and share none of C's preprocessor macros flaws.

To invoke a template, call it like a procedure.

Example:

template `!=` (a, b: expr): expr =
  # this definition exists in the System module
  not (a == b)

assert(5 != 6) # the compiler rewrites that to: assert(not (5 == 6))

The !=, >, >=, in, notin, isnot operators are in fact templates: this has the benefit that if you overload the == operator, the != operator is available automatically and does the right thing. (Except for IEEE floating point numbers - NaN breaks basic boolean logic.)

a > b is transformed into b < a. a in b is transformed into contains(b, a). notin and isnot have the obvious meanings.

Templates are especially useful for lazy evaluation purposes. Consider a simple proc for logging:

const
  debug = true

proc log(msg: string) {.inline.} =
  if debug: stdout.writeln(msg)

var
  x = 4
log("x has the value: " & $x)

This code has a shortcoming: if debug is set to false someday, the quite expensive $ and & operations are still performed! (The argument evaluation for procedures is eager).

Turning the log proc into a template solves this problem:

const
  debug = true

template log(msg: string) =
  if debug: stdout.writeln(msg)

var
  x = 4
log("x has the value: " & $x)

The parameters' types can be ordinary types or the meta types expr (stands for expression), stmt (stands for statement) or typedesc (stands for type description). If the template has no explicit return type, stmt is used for consistency with procs and methods.

The template body does not open a new scope. To open a new scope use a block statement:

template declareInScope(x: expr, t: typeDesc): stmt {.immediate.} =
  var x: t

template declareInNewScope(x: expr, t: typeDesc): stmt {.immediate.} =
  # open a new scope:
  block:
    var x: t

declareInScope(a, int)
a = 42  # works, `a` is known here

declareInNewScope(b, int)
b = 42  # does not work, `b` is unknown

(The manual explains why the immediate pragma is needed for these templates.)

If there is a stmt parameter it should be the last in the template declaration. The reason is that statements can be passed to a template via a special : syntax:

template withFile(f: expr, filename: string, mode: TFileMode,
                  body: stmt): stmt {.immediate.} =
  let fn = filename
  var f: TFile
  if open(f, fn, mode):
    try:
      body
    finally:
      close(f)
  else:
    quit("cannot open: " & fn)

withFile(txt, "ttempl3.txt", fmWrite):
  txt.writeln("line 1")
  txt.writeln("line 2")

In the example the two writeln statements are bound to the body parameter. The withFile template contains boilerplate code and helps to avoid a common bug: to forget to close the file. Note how the let fn = filename statement ensures that filename is evaluated only once.

Macros

Macros enable advanced compile-time code transformations, but they cannot change Nimrod's syntax. However, this is no real restriction because Nimrod's syntax is flexible enough anyway. Macros have to be implemented in pure Nimrod code if foreign function interface (FFI) is not enabled in the compiler, but other than that restriction (which at some point in the future will go away) you can write any kind of Nimrod code and the compiler will run it at compile time.

There are two ways to write a macro, either generating Nimrod source code and letting the compiler parse it, or creating manually an abstract syntax tree (AST) which you feed to the compiler. In order to build the AST one needs to know how the Nimrod concrete syntax is converted to an abstract syntax tree (AST). The AST is documented in the macros module.

Once your macro is finished, there are two ways to invoke it:

invoking a macro like a procedure call (expression macros)
invoking a macro with the special macrostmt syntax (statement macros)

Expression Macros

The following example implements a powerful debug command that accepts a variable number of arguments:

# to work with Nimrod syntax trees, we need an API that is defined in the
# ``macros`` module:
import macros

macro debug(n: varargs[expr]): stmt =
  # `n` is a Nimrod AST that contains a list of expressions;
  # this macro returns a list of statements:
  result = newNimNode(nnkStmtList, n)
  # iterate over any argument that is passed to this macro:
  for i in 0..n.len-1:
    # add a call to the statement list that writes the expression;
    # `toStrLit` converts an AST to its string representation:
    result.add(newCall("write", newIdentNode("stdout"), toStrLit(n[i])))
    # add a call to the statement list that writes ": "
    result.add(newCall("write", newIdentNode("stdout"), newStrLitNode(": ")))
    # add a call to the statement list that writes the expressions value:
    result.add(newCall("writeln", newIdentNode("stdout"), n[i]))

var
  a: array[0..10, int]
  x = "some string"
a[0] = 42
a[1] = 45

debug(a[0], a[1], x)

The macro call expands to:

write(stdout, "a[0]")
write(stdout, ": ")
writeln(stdout, a[0])

write(stdout, "a[1]")
write(stdout, ": ")
writeln(stdout, a[1])

write(stdout, "x")
write(stdout, ": ")
writeln(stdout, x)

Statement Macros

Statement macros are defined just as expression macros. However, they are invoked by an expression following a colon.

The following example outlines a macro that generates a lexical analyzer from regular expressions:

macro case_token(n: stmt): stmt =
  # creates a lexical analyzer from regular expressions
  # ... (implementation is an exercise for the reader :-)
  discard

case_token: # this colon tells the parser it is a macro statement
of r"[A-Za-z_]+[A-Za-z_0-9]*":
  return tkIdentifier
of r"0-9+":
  return tkInteger
of r"[\+\-\*\?]+":
  return tkOperator
else:
  return tkUnknown

Term rewriting macros

Term rewriting macros can be used to enhance the compilation process with user defined optimizations; see this document for further information.

Building your first macro

To give a footstart to writing macros we will show now how to turn your typical dynamic code into something that compiles statically. For the exercise we will use the following snippet of code as the starting point:

import strutils, tables

proc readCfgAtRuntime(cfgFilename: string): TTable[string, string] =
  let
    inputString = readFile(cfgFilename)
  var
    source = ""
  
  result = initTable[string, string]()
  for line in inputString.splitLines:
    # Ignore empty lines
    if line.len < 1: continue
    var chunks = split(line, ',')
    if chunks.len != 2:
      quit("Input needs comma split values, got: " & line)
    result[chunks[0]] = chunks[1]
  
  if result.len < 1: quit("Input file empty!")

let info = readCfgAtRuntime("data.cfg")

when isMainModule:
  echo info["licenseOwner"]
  echo info["licenseKey"]
  echo info["version"]

Presumably this snippet of code could be used in a commercial software, reading a configuration file to display information about the person who bought the software. This external file would be generated by an online web shopping cart to be included along the program containing the license information:

version,1.1
licenseOwner,Hyori Lee
licenseKey,M1Tl3PjBWO2CC48m

The readCfgAtRuntime proc will open the given filename and return a TTable from the tables module. The parsing of the file is done (without much care for handling invalid data or corner cases) using the splitLines proc from the strutils module. There are many things which can fail; mind the purpose is explaining how to make this run at compile time, not how to properly implement a DRM scheme.

The reimplementation of this code as a compile time proc will allow us to get rid of the data.cfg file we would need to distribute along the binary, plus if the information is really constant, it doesn't make from a logical point of view to have it mutable in a global variable, it would be better if it was a constant. Finally, and likely the most valuable feature, we can implement some verification at compile time. You could think of this as a better unit testing, since it is impossible to obtain a binary unless everything is correct, preventing you to ship to users a broken program which won't start because a small critical file is missing or its contents changed by mistake to something invalid.

Generating source code

Our first attempt will start by modifying the program to generate a compile time string with the generated source code, which we then pass to the parseStmt proc from the macros module. Here is the modified source code implementing the macro:

import macros, strutils

macro readCfgAndBuildSource(cfgFilename: string): stmt =
  let
    inputString = slurp(cfgFilename.strVal)
  var
    source = ""
  
  for line in inputString.splitLines:
    # Ignore empty lines
    if line.len < 1: continue
    var chunks = split(line, ',')
    if chunks.len != 2:
      error("Input needs comma split values, got: " & line)
    source &= "const cfg" & chunks[0] & "= \"" & chunks[1] & "\"\n"
  
  if source.len < 1: error("Input file empty!")
  result = parseStmt(source)

readCfgAndBuildSource("data.cfg")

when isMainModule:
  echo cfglicenseOwner
  echo cfglicenseKey
  echo cfgversion

The good news is not much has changed! First, we need to change the handling of the input parameter. In the dynamic version the readCfgAtRuntime proc receives a string parameter. However, in the macro version it is also declared as string, but this is the outside interface of the macro. When the macro is run, it actually gets a PNimrodNode object instead of a string, and we have to call the strVal proc from the macros module to obtain the string being passed in to the macro.

Second, we cannot use the readFile proc from the system module due to FFI restriction at compile time. If we try to use this proc, or any other which depends on FFI, the compiler will error with the message cannot evaluate and a dump of the macro's source code, along with a stack trace where the compiler reached before bailing out. We can get around this limitation by using the slurp proc from the system module, which was precisely made for compilation time (just like gorge which executes an external program and captures its output).

The interesting thing is that our macro does not return a runtime TTable object. Instead, it builds up Nimrod source code into the source variable. For each line of the configuration file a const variable will be generated. To avoid conflicts we prefix these variables with cfg. In essence, what the compiler is doing is replacing the line calling the macro with the following snippet of code:

const cfgversion= "1.1"
const cfglicenseOwner= "Hyori Lee"
const cfglicenseKey= "M1Tl3PjBWO2CC48m"

You can verify this yourself adding the line echo source somewhere at the end of the macro and compiling the program. Another difference is that instead of calling the usual quit proc to abort (which we could still call) this version calls the error proc. The error proc has the same behavior as quit but will dump also the source and file line information where the error happened, making it easier for the programmer to find where compilation failed. In this situation it would point to the line invoking the macro, but not the line of data.cfg we are processing, that's something the macro itself would need to control.

Generating AST by hand

To generate an AST we would need to intimately know the structures used by the Nimrod compiler exposed in the macros module, which at first look seems a daunting task. But we can use as helper shortcut the dumpTree macro, which is used as a statement macro instead of an expression macro. Since we know that we want to generate a bunch of const symbols we can create the following source file and compile it to see what the compiler expects from us:

import macros

dumpTree:
  const cfgversion: string = "1.1"
  const cfglicenseOwner= "Hyori Lee"
  const cfglicenseKey= "M1Tl3PjBWO2CC48m"

During compilation of the source code we should see the following lines in the output (again, since this is a macro, compilation is enough, you don't have to run any binary):

StmtList
  ConstSection
    ConstDef
      Ident !"cfgversion"
      Ident !"string"
      StrLit 1.1
  ConstSection
    ConstDef
      Ident !"cfglicenseOwner"
      Empty
      StrLit Hyori Lee
  ConstSection
    ConstDef
      Ident !"cfglicenseKey"
      Empty
      StrLit M1Tl3PjBWO2CC48m

With this output we have a better idea of what kind of input the compiler expects. We need to generate a list of statements. For each constant the source code generates a ConstSection and a ConstDef. If we were to move all the constants to a single const block we would see only a single ConstSection with three children.

Maybe you didn't notice, but in the dumpTree example the first constant explicitly specifies the type of the constant. That's why in the tree output the two last constants have their second child Empty but the first has a string identifier. So basically a const definition is made up from an identifier, optionally a type (can be an empty node) and the value. Armed with this knowledge, let's look at the finished version of the AST building macro:

import macros, strutils

macro readCfgAndBuildAST(cfgFilename: string): stmt =
  let
    inputString = slurp(cfgFilename.strVal)
  
  result = newNimNode(nnkStmtList)
  for line in inputString.splitLines:
    # Ignore empty lines
    if line.len < 1: continue
    var chunks = split(line, ',')
    if chunks.len != 2:
      error("Input needs comma split values, got: " & line)
    var
      section = newNimNode(nnkConstSection)
      constDef = newNimNode(nnkConstDef)
    constDef.add(newIdentNode("cfg" & chunks[0]))
    constDef.add(newEmptyNode())
    constDef.add(newStrLitNode(chunks[1]))
    section.add(constDef)
    result.add(section)
  
  if result.len < 1: error("Input file empty!")

readCfgAndBuildAST("data.cfg")

when isMainModule:
  echo cfglicenseOwner
  echo cfglicenseKey
  echo cfgversion

Since we are building on the previous example generating source code, we will only mention the differences to it. Instead of creating a temporary string variable and writing into it source code as if it were written by hand, we use the result variable directly and create a statement list node (nnkStmtList) which will hold our children.

For each input line we have to create a constant definition (nnkConstDef) and wrap it inside a constant section (nnkConstSection). Once these variables are created, we fill them hierarchichally like the previous AST dump tree showed: the constant definition is a child of the section definition, and the constant definition has an identifier node, an empty node (we let the compiler figure out the type), and a string literal with the value.

A last tip when writing a macro: if you are not sure the AST you are building looks ok, you may be tempted to use the dumpTree macro. But you can't use it inside the macro you are writting/debugging. Instead echo the string generated by treeRepr. If at the end of the this example you add echo treeRepr(result) you should get the same output as using the dumpTree macro, but of course you can call that at any point of the macro where you might be having troubles.

Nimrod Tutorial (Part II)