I am trying to convert SICP's meta-circular evaluator to Clojure. In setup-environment a call to extend-environment does not compile because I get the error "Attempting to call unbound fn". Here's part of the code:
(... loads of methods for creating and managing environment list)
(def primitive-procedures
(list (list 'car first)
(list 'cdr rest)
(list 'cons conj) ;; TODO: reverse
(list 'null? nil?)
(list 'list list)
(list '+ +)
(list '- -)
(list '* *)
(list '/ /)
;; more primitives
))
(def primitive-procedure-names
#(map [first
primitive-procedures]))
(def primitive-procedure-objects
(fn [] (map (fn [p] (list 'primitive (second p)))
primitive-procedures)))
(def the-empty-environment '())
(defn extend-environment [vars vals base-env]
(if (= (count vars) (count vals))
(conj base-env (make-frame vars vals))
(if (< (count vars) (count vals))
(throw (Throwable. "Too many arguments supplied") vars vals)
(throw (Throwable. "Too few arguments supplied") vars vals))))
;; Added # in front here so it could be called (???)
(defn setup-environment []
#(let [initial-env
(extend-environment (primitive-procedure-names)
(primitive-procedure-objects)
the-empty-environment)] ;; <= that does not work
(define-variable! 'true true initial-env)
(define-variable! 'false false initial-env)
initial-env)))
;; Method for interacting with the evaluator:
(defn driver-loop []
(prompt-for-input input-prompt)
(let [input (read)]
(let [output (m-eval input the-global-environment)]
(announce-output output-prompt)
(user-print output)))
(driver-loop))
(...)
(def the-global-environment (setup-environment))
(driver-loop)
And when I evaluate the extend-environment method I get the following error:
- Caused by java.lang.IllegalStateException
Attempting to call unbound fn:
#'scheme-evaluator/extend-environment
Var.java: 43 clojure.lang.Var$Unbound/throwArity
AFn.java: 40 clojure.lang.AFn/invoke
scheme-evaluator.clj: 277 scheme-evaluator/eval7808
I think I am not providing the right type of parameters or I have not created the right type of function. I tried various variations of anonymous methods and passing in parentheses or without, but I don't get it to compile.
Does anyone know what the reason is for this error and how can I fix it?
The definition of
(def primitive-procedure-names
#(map [first
primitive-procedures]))
likely does not do what you intend. As written this defines a function that takes no arguments and returns transducer (which is a function) that will, if applied to a sequence substitute the values 0 and 1 for the functions first and primitive-procedures respectively. I'll demonstrate first with functions and then with values of numbers to make what's happening more clear (hopefully):
user> (into [] (map [first 'example]) [0 1])
[#function[clojure.core/first--4339] example]
user> (into [] (map [1 2]) [0 1])
[1 2]
perhaps you wanted
(def primitive-procedure-names
(map first primitive-procedures))
And may I suggest using the defn form for defining functions and the def form for defining values unless you have a really strong reason not to.
setup-environment is a function that returns a function which will if you call that function return a function that return's the initial-environment unmodified by the calls to define-variable. In Clojure the collection types are immutable so if you want to make several changes to a collection it's necessary to chain the result of adding the first one into the imput of adding the second one, then return the result of adding the second one:
(add-second (add-first initial-value))
which can also be written like this:
(-> initial-value
add-first
add-second)
which is just a shorthand for the example above.