To do that I used pretty well known feature of Emacs, namely use of Lisp expressions in the replacement string of replace-regexp function.

Commands entered in minibuffer:

M-x replace-regexp RET \(#.*\)  RET \,(downcase \1) RET

The only problem with that code is that if you have variable case-fold-search in Emacs set to true (which is the case in my Emacs by default) replace-regexp will report about successful replace but string won’t be downcased anyway. To quickly switch off case-fold-search I used M-: (setq case-fold-search nil) and after that downcasing worked as expected.

Though I use tiling window manager StumpWM and it’s very easy to switch to running Firefox with keyboard shortcut and make refresh, it’s even easier not to leave focus from Emacs window and just send command to Firefox to refresh itself.
For that I use:

• MozRepl firefox plugin to allow connect to Firefox’s REPL. After installation in Tools -> MozRepl menu I chose ‘Activate on startup’ for convenience
• MozRepl Emacs integration (If you use nXhtml package in Emacs you already have that integration and can skip this part)

Command to refresh Firefox is BrowserReload();

Final touch is small anonymous function to send that command to mozrepl, keybinding to C-x p and we’re all set:

(global-set-key (kbd "C-x p")
                (lambda ()
                  (interactive)
                  (comint-send-string (inferior-moz-process)
                                      "BrowserReload();")))

Now anytime just press C-x p and refresh command will be sent to Firefox starting along the way mozrepl session in your Emacs if it’s not been already started.

Just add to your .emacs

(setq py-python-command-args '("-pylab" "-colors" "Linux"))

before you load ipython package

(setq py-python-command-args '("-pylab" "-colors" "Linux"))
(require 'ipython)

Now IPython uses ‘Linux’ color scheme which is suitable for dark background with light fonts instead of default ‘LightBG’.

Here it is:

Python 2.5.2 (r252:60911, Sep 30 2008, 15:41:38)
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 0.9.1 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object'. ?object also works, ?? prints more.

  Welcome to pylab, a matplotlib-based Python environment.
  For more information, type 'help(pylab)'.

In [1]: d = dict()

In [2]: ?d
Type:           dict
Base Class:     <type 'dict'>
String Form:    {}
Namespace:      Interactive
Length:         0
Docstring:
    dict() -> new empty dictionary.
    dict(mapping) -> new dictionary initialized from a mapping object's
        (key, value) pairs.
    dict(seq) -> new dictionary initialized as if via:
        d = {}
        for k, v in seq:
            d[k] = v
    dict(**kwargs) -> new dictionary initialized with the name=value pairs
        in the keyword argument list.  For example:  dict(one=1, two=2)

In [3]: 

Marking region and running M-x flush-lines RET ^$ RET quickly makes it better by removing those pesky blank lines. This is, of course, makes sense only if pasted code doesn’t contain blank lines you want to preserve.

Update:
You may need to use something more complex than simple ^$ (something like ^\W*$ as regexp) if “blank” line contains some whitespace characters.

Example before:

-export([test1/0,

         test2/0,

         test3/0,

         double/1]).

After marking region and applying M-x flush-lines RET ^\W*$ RET (in your case just ^$ may be sufficient):

-export([test1/0,
         test2/0,
         test3/0,
         double/1]).

1. C-w to yank next word or character in buffer onto the end of the search string, and search for it. You can repeatedly press C-w consuming next word or character.
2. C-y to yank rest of line onto end of search string and search for it.
3. M-n/M-p to search for the next/previous item in the search ring.

As usual for more information read help (C-h k C-s or C-h f isearch-forward RET ).

You mark region, invoke function, provide regexp and voila – your region is aligned.

Example data from align-regexp help:

Fred (123) 456-7890
Alice (123) 456-7890
Mary-Anne (123) 456-7890
Joe (123) 456-7890

Let’s say we want to align region on “(” character. For that we mark region we want to align and invoke function with: M-x align-regexp RET ( RET
Result of such invocation will be:

Fred      (123) 456-7890
Alice     (123) 456-7890
Mary-Anne (123) 456-7890
Joe       (123) 456-7890

Funs – sequel

Continuing previous post about functions let’s remember about Fun. I already mentioned it in Part I and promised to show its advanced forms. So, here we go.

Fun with one clause:

1> Double = fun(X) -> X * 2 end.
#Fun<erl_eval.6.56006484>
2> Double(2).
4

But Fun actually has the same function declaration syntax as regular function, except that it has no name in declaration, so we can have this:

3> Big = fun (X) when X > 100 -> true;
3>           (X) -> false
3>       end.
#Fun<erl_eval.6.56006484>
4> lists:filter(Big, [20, 30, 120, 130]).
[120,130]

As you see our Fun has two clauses separated by semicolon(;) and first clause has also guard, ie syntax is the same as in regular function declaration.

There are also following fun expressions that can be used:

1. fun FunctionName/Arity (FunctionName should point to local function defined in the same module with our fun)
2. fun Module:FunctionName/Arity (FunctionName should be exported from module Module)

fun FunctionName/Arity is just syntactic sugar for fun (X1, ..Xn) -> FunctionName(X1, .., Xn) end.

Let’s take a look on foregoing in action and create mymath.erl

-module(mymath).
-export([test1/0,
         test2/0,
         test3/0,
         double/1]).

test1() -> lists:map(fun(X) -> X * 2 end, [1, 2, 3]).

test2() -> lists:map(fun double_local/1, [1, 2, 3]).

test3() -> lists:map(fun mymath:double/1, [1, 2, 3]).

%% helper function, not exported
double_local(X) ->
    X * 2.

%% helper function, exported
double(X) ->
    X * 2.

Compile and test it (I’m compiling as usual in Emacs with C-c C-k):

1> c("/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/mymath", [{outdir, "/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/"}]).
{ok,mymath}
2> mymath:test1().
[2,4,6]
3> mymath:test2().
[2,4,6]
4> mymath:test3().
[2,4,6]

Also tuple of type {Module, FunctionName} is interpreted as a fun Module:FunctionName/Arity which you already saw. This usage is deprecated, but to be complete here is an example:

5> Append = {lists, append}.
{lists,append}
6> Append([1, 2], [3, 4, 5]).
[1,2,3,4,5]

As you already noted Fun in Erlang is “richer” than lambda in Python.

Built-in functions, BIFs

Both Erlang and Python provide built-in functions that are always available and do not require explicit usage of module name to use them.

Python:

Read more about builtins in library reference.

In Python shell you can inspect in addition contents of __builtins__ module if you need:

>>> import pprint
>>> pprint.pprint(dir(__builtins__))
['ArithmeticError',
 'AssertionError',
 ...
 'type',
 'unichr',
 'unicode',
 'vars',
 'xrange',
 'zip']

Erlang:
Most of the built-in functions belong to module erlang and they are auto-imported.
To get list of all BIFs with description read man erlang.
In Eshell you can get list of functions that belong to erlang module with m(Module). command:

1> m(erlang).
Module erlang compiled: No compile time info available
Compiler options:  []
Object file: preloaded
Exports:
'!'/2                         list_to_existing_atom/1
'$erase'/1                    list_to_float/1
'$erase'/0                    list_to_integer/2
'$get'/1                      list_to_integer/1
'$get'/0                      list_to_pid/1
'$get_keys'/1                 list_to_tuple/1
'$put'/2                      load_module/2
'*'/2                         loaded/0
'+'/1                         localtime/0
'+'/2                         localtime_to_universaltime/1
'++'/2                        localtime_to_universaltime/2
...
ok

Take into account though that not all functions in above list that you’ll see are auto-imported and may require usage of module: prefix. Again, for more information read man erlang (either in command line with erl -man erlang or if you use Emacs take a look at Erlang man pages in Emacs)

Macros

Python does not have them, Erlang does. In Erlang they are not as powerful as in Common Lisp, but more like in C.

They are defined in following form:

-define(Const, Replacement).
-define(Func(Var1,...,VarN), Replacement).

Whenever erlang preprocessor encounters expression of form ?MacroName it expands corresponding macro.
Define utils.erl:

-module(utils).
-export([foo/0]).
-define(TIMEOUT, 100).
-define(FUNCMACRO(X, Y), {X, x, Y, y}).

foo() ->
    io:format("TIMEOUT = ~p~n", [?TIMEOUT]),
    ?FUNCMACRO(3, 7).

Compile and run:

1> utils:foo().
TIMEOUT = 100
{3,x,7,y}

There are also some predefined macros:

?MODULE

The name of the current module.

?MODULE_STRING.

The name of the current module as a string.

?FILE.

The file name of the current module.

?LINE.

The current line number.

?MACHINE.

The machine name, 'BEAM'.

Having ?MODULE we can rewrite earlier example with Fun as:

-module(mymath).
-export([test1/0,
         test2/0,
         test3/0,
         double/1]).

test1() -> lists:map(fun(X) -> X * 2 end, [1, 2, 3]).

test2() -> lists:map(fun double_local/1, [1, 2, 3]).

%% test3() -> lists:map(fun mymath:double/1, [1, 2, 3]).
test3() -> lists:map(fun ?MODULE:double/1, [1, 2, 3]).

%% helper function, not exported
double_local(X) ->
    X * 2.

%% helper function, exported
double(X) ->
    X * 2.

And as usual compile and run to see that result is the same:

1> c("/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/mymath", [{outdir, "/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/"}]).
{ok,mymath}
2>  mymath:test1().
[2,4,6]
3>  mymath:test2().
[2,4,6]
4>  mymath:test3().
[2,4,6]

In addition there is also flow control in macros. Some of corresponding macro directives are:

• ifdef(Macro). – Evaluate the following lines only if Macro is defined.
• else. – It’s used after ifdef or ifndef
• endif. - Marks the end of ifdef or ifndef directive

Example in utils.erl:

-module(utils).
-export([foo/0]).

-ifdef(debug).
-define(LOG(Msg), io:format("{~p:~p}: ~p~n", [?MODULE, ?LINE, Msg])).
-else.
-define(LOG(Msg), true).
-endif.

foo() ->
    ?LOG("Debug is enabled").

To turn LOG macro on debug should be defined. This can be achieved from command line with erlc -Ddebug utils.erl or from Eshell using c/2 function:

1> c(utils, {d, debug}).
{ok,utils}
2> utils:foo().
{utils:11}: "Debug is enabled"
ok

To turn LOG macro off debug should be omitted:

3> c(utils).
{ok,utils}
4> utils:foo().
true

To be continued.

Over time I became aware of several means to create tables and export them in different formats in Emacs(at the moment I’m personally interested in plain ASCII and HTML):

1. Excellent org-mode has built-in table editor which allows easily format tables in plain ASCII
2. table.el with its advanced ability to construct table layout

Both modes (technically though Table mode in table.el is not mode) are part of modern Emacs and both allow export table in HTML format.

To quickly create tables personally I prefer table.el which provides also following features:

1. A cell can be split horizontally and vertically.
2. A cell can span into an adjacent cell.

Use C-h b in table to get self-descriptive information about table.el key bindings. In contrast to org-mode(or its orgtbl-mode minor mode) table.el has no special bindings to copy row/cell and yank it. But this is easily achieved by using usual region commands for rows and rectangular commands for cells.

Today we are going to take a look at functions.
In Erlang there is no direct correspondence to what we have in Python:

1. default values, keyword arguments and formal parameter of form **name

def foo(key, name='ruslan', type='unknown', **kw):
    print 'key = %s, name = %s, type = %s' % (key, name, type)
    for key, val in kw.items():
        print '%s = %s' % (key, val)

>>> foo(1)
key = 1, name = ruslan, type = unknown
>>> foo(1, type='known', x=1, y=10)
key = 1, name = ruslan, type = known
y = 10
x = 1

2. formal parameter of form *name

def double_sum(*args):
    return sum(x * 2 for x in args)

>>> double_sum(2, 4, 5)
22

Let’s take a look at Erlang’s function declaration syntax (a bit modified from Erlang Reference Manual):

1. Function declaration consists of function clauses separated by semicolons (;) and terminated by period (.)
2. Function clause consists of head and body separated by ->
3. A clause head consists of function name (which is atom), argument list(each argument is pattern) and optional guard sequence beginning with keyword when.
4. A clause body consists of sequence of expressions separated by comma (,)

Name(Pattern11,…,Pattern1N) [when GuardSeq1] ->
Body1;
…;
Name(PatternK1,…,PatternKN) [when GuardSeqK] ->
BodyK.

where Body is in form:
Expr1,
Expr2,
…
ExprN

Number of arguments in function is called arity. Function is uniquely identified by combination of module name, function name and function’s arity and this form is often written as m:f/N. Two functions in the module with the same name, but different arity
are completely different functions, remember it.

Enough dry theory, let’s define our Erlang factorial function in module mymath.erl :

-module(mymath).
-export([factorial/1]).

factorial(0) ->
    1;
factorial(N) ->
    N * factorial(N-1).

What we have here:

1) function declaration of one function called factorial
2) there are two clauses
- first clause separated by semicolon (;)

factorial(0) ->
    1;

- second and final clause terminated with period (.)

factorial(N) ->
    N * factorial(N-1).

3) Every clause (first and second) has correspondingly head and body. Head consists of function’s name, in our case it’s factorial and after follows arguments list which contains patterns. In first clause pattern is 0, in second – N.

How this works:

When function is entered, the function clauses are pattern matched against passed arguments. Pattern matching happens in order functions are defined in module. So when you enter

1> mymath:factorial(5).
120

first 5 is matched against clause factorial(0) and fails as 5 != 0, then 5 is matched against N in second clause and pattern matching succeeds. As a result unbound variable N in pattern becomes bound and gets value 5. This leads to execution of body of second clause, namely N * factorial(N-1). This happens recursively until N becomes 0 and first clause factorial(0) is executed terminating recursion.
The same factorial function will look in Python without pattern matching like:

def factorial(n):
    if n == 0:
        return 1
    return n * factorial(n-1)

In Python’s version we “hardcoded” branching in function’s body.

The benefits of pattern matching are that when conditions inside function become complex you may do your job better and write less code using pattern matching and also if you have big function this may mean that you do not have to modify body of your function but to add another clause with corresponding pattern.

Earlier I mentioned that function clauses are pattern matched in order they are defined in module. For our function this is important. If we change order of clauses this will lead to problems, as the condition to terminate recursion never appear:

-module(mymath).
-export([factorial/1]).

factorial(N) ->
    N * factorial(N-1);
factorial(0) ->
    1.

When compiling we will get warning (use C-c C-k in Emacs or c(mymath). in Eshell to compile)

2> c("/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/mymath", [{outdir, "/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/"}]).
/home/alienoid/dev/erlang/mymath.erl:6: Warning: this clause cannot match because a previous clause at line 4 always matches
{ok,mymath}

indicating that second clause will never match, but still you can call the function (it will most likely to crash after eating all your available memory).

You can easily avoid that problem introducing guard that starts with keyword when in function clause’s head:

-module(mymath).
-export([factorial/1]).

factorial(N) when N > 0 ->
    N * factorial(N-1);
factorial(0) ->
    1.

Now you can put those two clauses in any order you like. I should also add that if during pattern matching no matched function clause is found a function_clause run time error will occur:

3> mymath:factorial(-4).

=ERROR REPORT==== 24-Sep-2007::01:53:25 ===
Error in process <0.29.0> with exit value: {function_clause,[{mymath,factorial,[-4]},{erl_eval,do_apply,5},{shell,exprs,6},{shell,eval_loop,3}]}

** exited: {function_clause,[{mymath,factorial,[-4]},
                             {erl_eval,do_apply,5},
                             {shell,exprs,6},
                             {shell,eval_loop,3}]} **

What is guard anyway ? Guards make pattern matching more powerful, they can be used to perform different tests and comparison operations on variables in a pattern as you could see. You can have several guard expressions in clause separated by commans (,). The guard containing several guard expressions evaluates to true only if every guard expression evaluates to true. Example of guard containing several guard expressions:

-module(mymath).
-export([factorial/1]).

factorial(N) when is_integer(N), N > 0 ->
    N * factorial(N-1);
factorial(0) ->
    1.

For above definition calling mymath:factorial(5) reads as: choose clause factorial(N) when (N is integer AND N > 0)

There are also guard sequences which have form guard1; guard2; …; guardN and guard sequence evaluates to true if at least one guard is evaluated to true:

-module(mymath).
-export([factorial/1]).

factorial(N) when is_integer(N), N > 0; is_list(N) ->
    N * factorial(N-1);
factorial(0) ->
    1.

For above definition calling mymath:factorial(5) reads as: choose clause factorial(N) when (N is integer AND N > 0) OR N is list.

You have probably noted that the way we defined our factorial function means that it will be calling itself recursively and this will use stack and stack is not infinite resource. We need to do something about our function and this means to make it tail recursive. When last expression in function body is function call this means that call is tail recursive and this is how infinite loop may be done without consuming stack resources. So here is our new tail-recursive function factorial that uses accumulator to pass value of previous calculation:

-module(mymath).
-export([factorial/1]).

%% this one is exported, arity is 1
factorial(N) ->
    factorial(N, 1).

%% helper function, not exported, arity is 2
%% tail-recursive, uses accumulator to store
%% calculation between invocations
factorial(N, Acc) when N > 0 ->
    factorial(N-1, N*Acc);
factorial(0, Acc) ->
    Acc.

In foregoing example you can see guards, tail-recursion, usage of accumulators, functions with different arities. Experiment with it.

So far so good, but I must admit sometimes I get the blues when I comment some nested code blocks with M-; keystrokes. Well, maybe I’m blowing things out of proportion about my sadness, but in any case recently I came across really nice small blog post called comment-style and since then I’m happy with comments produced in nested blocks. Let’s see why.

When you comment marked regions in Emacs buffer with M-; the comment-style variable defines the way regions are commented. Default value is plain.

Buffer with Python code before commenting:

def binsearch(seq, key, start, end):
    if end < start:
        return -1
    mid = (start + end) / 2
    if key == seq[mid]:
        return mid
    if key < seq[mid]:
        return binsearch(seq, key, start, mid-1)
    if key > seq[mid]:
        return binsearch(seq, key, start+1, end)

Buffer with Python code after commenting:

def binsearch(seq, key, start, end):
    if end < start:
        return -1
    mid = (start + end) / 2
    # if key == seq[mid]:
#         return mid
    if key < seq[mid]:
        return binsearch(seq, key, start, mid-1)
    if key > seq[mid]:
        return binsearch(seq, key, start+1, end)

As you see visually elements of commented block are not on the same line.

Example with Erlang code before commenting (somewhat far-fetched example though our main concern are comments, not code here):

all(Pred, [Hd|Tail]) ->
    case Pred(Hd) of
        true -> all(Pred, Tail);
        false ->
            io:format("Hd = ~p~n", [Hd]),
            true,
            false
    end;
all(Pred, []) when is_function(Pred, 1) -> true.

After commenting:

all(Pred, [Hd|Tail]) ->
    case Pred(Hd) of
        true -> all(Pred, Tail);
        false ->
            %% io:format("Hd = ~p~n", [Hd]),
%%             true,
            false
    end;
all(Pred, []) when is_function(Pred, 1) -> true.

So the visual issue with comments is the same.

After reading foregoing blog post about comment-style I’ve added this line to my .emacs:

(setq comment-style 'indent)

Easy as pie and which means (taken from Emacs help): ” …`comment-start’ markers should not be put at the left margin but at the current indentation of the region to comment.”

After that addition foregoing commented block in Python mode will look like:

def binsearch(seq, key, start, end):
    if end < start:
        return -1
    mid = (start + end) / 2
    # if key == seq[mid]:
    #     return mid
    if key < seq[mid]:
        return binsearch(seq, key, start, mid-1)
    if key > seq[mid]:
        return binsearch(seq, key, start+1, end)

in Erlang mode:

all(Pred, [Hd|Tail]) ->
    case Pred(Hd) of
        true -> all(Pred, Tail);
        false ->
            %% io:format("Hd = ~p~n", [Hd]),
            %% true,
            false
    end;
all(Pred, []) when is_function(Pred, 1) -> true.

Now I am happy. Thank you, Edward for the tip.