The module question ended with a limit: textual inlining destroys file
provenance, so a duplicate-definition message could name the symbol but not the
files. Threading it exposed a bigger absence first.
TOKENS HAD NO POSITION AT ALL. A token was a flat (kind, value) pair, so NO
diagnostic in El could name a place -- every error named a symbol and never a
line. That is the prerequisite the module question was resting on.
THE CHAIN, end to end
lexer counts newlines; tok_append mints (kind, value, line)
parser stride 2 -> 3; tok_line added; FnDef carries its line
codegen records <fn> defines_at:<line>
resolve_imports publishes <file> spans <start> <end> for the combined source
checker maps a combined line back to file:line-within-that-file
duplicate definition: 'helper' is defined 2 times — El has no namespacing,
so imported modules share one global scope
/tmp/modtest/a.el:1
/tmp/modtest/b.el:1
PREDICTIONS AND RESULTS
P1 15 stride sites, encapsulated in tok_kind/tok_value TRUE, but see below
P2 adding a line field is mechanical TRUE
P3 the lexer must count newlines TRUE
P4 resolve_imports can record per-file line ranges TRUE
P5 the message can then name both files TRUE
P6 token memory grows TRUE, 25.0 -> 33.9 MB (+36%)
FOUR DEFECTS, EACH FOUND BY RUNNING AND NOT BY READING
1. interp_tokens_append_all walks the token list DIRECTLY with its own copy of
the stride. Gen1 built fine and gen2 emitted corrupt C, because the
compiler's own source uses string interpolation. My search missed it because
I grepped for the variable name `tokens`; it is called `dst`/`result`.
Searching by name instead of by shape -- third time today.
2. tok_count in test_compiler.el carried the stride too. I had scoped the search
to compiler sources and it had escaped into the tests.
3. Nested resolve_imports calls accumulated spans into shared state, so each
republished meaningless line ranges under the parent's name. Making the
buffer local fixed it; guarding the WRITE did not, which is what I tried
first.
4. The first working version reported b.el:3 -- the COMBINED line against a
filename that has no line 3. A file:line that does not match the file is
worse than no line at all.
105/105 native, 37/37 integration, fixpoint ok, compiler self-checks clean.
import "../../NOPE/does_not_exist.el"
compiled CLEANLY — exit 0, empty stderr, and a program silently missing
everything it imported.
resolve_imports did `fs_read(src_path)` and used the result without checking.
fs_read returns "" both for "file is empty" and "file does not exist", so a
typo, a moved file, or a relative path resolved from the wrong working
directory all produced a successful build of nothing.
It caused a real wrong conclusion during test-framework work: a bisection run
from a subdirectory where ../../runtime/ did not resolve produced ELEVEN
consecutive "successful" compiles that had included no runtime at all, and the
results were believed before anyone noticed.
Missing dependency, confident success — the same shape as a test suite
reporting pass for tests that never ran, and as a benchmark reporting 0us
because the optimiser deleted the loop.
fs_exists separates the two cases, so a legitimately empty file still resolves
to "" and is fine. A path that does not exist now prints the resolved path and
exits 1, which is what build scripts check.
Verified:
- bad import: exit 1 (was 0), message names the resolved path
- elc-cli.el still compiles, self-hosting fixpoint byte-identical
- neuron's full soul amalgam regeneration: exit 0, 405ms, output
byte-identical at 1,270,212 bytes
Add el_mem_check() to el_runtime.c: reads ELC_MAX_MEM_MB (default 512),
checks RSS via getrusage (macOS bytes / Linux KB normalised to MB), prints
a clear diagnostic to stderr and exits(1) if exceeded.
Wire it into two places:
- compiler.el: upfront check at --emit-header entry point
- codegen.el: per-function check in the streaming loop after each
el_arena_pop, so runaway growth is caught at the earliest function
boundary rather than after the machine is already dying.
The --emit-header path previously called parse() which builds the entire
program AST in memory before writing the .elh file. For checkout.el (~491
lines with HTML template trees and deep BinOp string-concat chains), this
exhausted memory before the header could be written.
Fix: replace parse() + emit_header() with scan_fn_sigs_el() +
emit_header_from_sigs(). The new path tokenises the source once, then
walks the flat token list skipping over function bodies entirely — peak
memory is O(tokens) instead of O(whole-program AST).
New functions in parser.el:
- scan_type_el: reads a type annotation and returns its El source string
- scan_params_el: reads (name: Type, ...) and returns El params string
- scan_fn_sigs_el: token-level scan that collects El-style fn signatures
without building any expression AST nodes
New function in compiler.el:
- emit_header_from_sigs: writes .elh from scan_fn_sigs_el output
Self-hosting check: elc compiled with new elc, diff of outputs is
identical (zero difference).
Smoke test: elc --emit-header checkout.el produces correct three-entry
.elh (previously truncated at two entries due to mid-parse OOM).
Implement compile_test() entry point that emits a C test harness instead
of a normal program. Test blocks (previously skipped) now compile to
static functions with per-assertion pass/fail tracking. Assert statement
added to parser and codegen. Runtime extended with now_ns, fs_list_json,
json_build_object, json_build_array, json_escape_string, state_has,
state_get_or. Fix float negation codegen, float equality comparisons,
time_to_parts return type (JSON string), time_format empty-fmt, json_set
raw-value semantics, state_keys JSON array return. All 310 native tests
pass across 9 suites (core, text, string, math, env, state, json, time, fs).
Wrapped compile() body in el_arena_push/pop so the arena is active
before lex() and scan_fn_sigs(). Previously both ran with
_tl_arena_active=0, leaking all token and signature strings permanently.
Also prevents inner pop(mark=0) calls from deactivating the arena
between per-function scopes. Verified: self-host PASS, RSS stable.
Combines two orthogonal optimizations:
1. Flat token list (from beta): lex() returns [Any] with alternating kind/value
pairs instead of [Map], eliminating one ElMap per token (~3 mallocs each).
Parser updated: tok_kind(t,i) = t[2*i], tok_value(t,i) = t[2*i+1].
2. Char code dispatch (from alpha): lex() hot loop uses str_char_code -> Int
instead of str_char_at -> strdup String for all character classification.
Eliminates ~400K x 16B = 6.4MB of temporary string allocations.
scan_digits and scan_ident also updated to use str_char_code.
Result on main.el: 17.1MB -> 14.4MB peak RSS (-16%).
Self-hosting: PASS.
bigmerge
will.anderson