I'm Getting Testy

Alright, here's an update.

CS 444 has took an odd turn. The Ada/CS grammar has not yet been defined. The class decides what is in the grammar and what isn't. I'm under the impression that this is going to be clarified by the test cases that we were supposed to submit.

The original assignment 1 deadline which was schedule for Jan 30th has been changed. Jan 30th is now a deadline to submit test cases. February 6th is now the new date to submit our scanner/parser.

Our current roles are as follows: Robert | Scanner, Ian | Bootstrapper, Dimitri | Parser.

My role seems pretty clear. I'm going to write a few functions that the parser will call to get tokens. I'm going to change it such that I pass the line the token is in, and the type of token it is. Unfortunately, Ian and I have been sidetracked. We've been doing Ada tutorials. I'm on Object-Oriented Programming ... Chapter 7 out of 18.

After that, I plan to come up with about 10 test cases. Although, I'm pretty sure I can think of a hell of a lot more. But my goal is 10 test cases by Sunday noon.

Feelings:

Programming languages is becoming a bigger nuisance than I had hoped. It's not a birdie course and Lushman is pushing this course pretty hard.

Programming skill. I'm worried. I won't lie. In my mind, to program a medium-sized project adequately requires a certain grasp of a language. I don't know how to define it but I can certainly say that we're not there. Ian is the closest, me second, and then Dimitri. The problems that this causes is a waste of time on fundamental concepts. Granted, people can say I can 'look-up' what I need. But that statement is based on one big assumption, that is, I-know-what-I-don't-know. And I don't. I'm clueless. On top of learning Lisp, and Ada we have programming languages handing our asses to us.

I'm far from giving up though. I'm Chapter 8 in Lisp and Chapter 7 in Ada.

Do you feel me?

Here's a status update.

I've "started" (and I use that term loosely) the scanner, I've created a transducer that reads in a file and compares it to a literal DFA that I created and turned into a table. It's not fully working yet. The table can read DFAs, but I just haven't cleaned up after I decided to output all my input into another file. I'm not sure how we would want to separate keywords from literals when translating. Unless we decide to put everything in memory which is a tad silly. I don't know fellas.

We may have bitten off more than we can chew. I'm concerned that I have little debugging knowledge. I found some information about how to go about build a unit testing framework. I'll put the zip file up here.

Anyways, I'm going to try and get programming languages done as soon as humanly possible and cryptography so that I may put full effort into this.

Peace.

DevjaVu Permissions Updated

I updated permissions on DevjaVu such that only the three of us can edit the wiki, edit the trac stuff, and only the three of us can access the svn repository. When svn asks for your username and password use your DevjaVu credentials.

I'm looking into whether there are SVN environment variables that can be set so we don't have to keep putting in our login and password to do SVN commands.

Go Time

Well, I'm all settled in at Village 1 now. Compilers on Thursday. I did not finish the Lisp book. Bah. Lets not even talk about the compilers text.

Status Report: Readings

Its almost mid November. We need to make sure we get all our readings done before the holiday starts. I'm suggesting we aim to have the Lisp book finsihed by the end of November and have most of the Compilers text read one time through before the holidays start. That sounds ambitious now, but I think it'll pay off once we're in class.

I've gotta stop playing StarCraft.

Next step: Lexical Analyzer

We have couple of options at this stage.

1). We can go off and keep reading the compiler text book and a Lisp text book.

2). We can start implementing a A1 which is a lexical anylzer and a parser.
This is under question since we don't know whcih language to use; Cormack decided to ignore our plea about Python.

3). This is my favourite option. There is a need to SQL-92 parser to verify if SQL code complies with SQL-92 standard. There are, of course commercial products, but nothing on the web where you can just post your sql to the form and it will check the code for SQL-92 compliance. The beauty of this project is that exactly fits in with our learning requirements for A1. We only need to implement a lexical analyzer and a parser. Grammar for SQL-92 already exists.

We might be able to reuse lexical analyzer and parser for other grammars, basically A1. I am not even talking about benefits like small ad revenue, industry exposure, and a better looking resume.

What are your thoughts?

Steel Bank Common Lisp

Hello Fellowship of The Compiler,

After a many-hour-long struggle with lord DiskQuota in the evil lands of CSCF. I finally succeded installing SB Common Lisp. Victory came as a surprise when DiskQuota decided to reform his armies and rebuild his indices. Losing his sight of how much of enemy territory I occupied proved to be a fatal mistake and the install succeded.

We now have officially installed order in dark lands previously occupied by DiskQuota.

The governor of those lands will be my much capabale student Steel Bank. His new palace is accessible by windy and dangerous paths. You better know your path before setting out to congratulate him on his new position.

setenv PATH "${PATH}:/u4/dgnidash/lisp/bin"
setenv SBCL_HOME "/u4/dgnidash/lisp/lib/sbcl"

Many dangers await you if you use the wrong shell.

Once you are in the palace, call out "sbcl" to reach Steel Bank.

The shadows are still whispering in the dark corners of the world. Evil is not dead. We might suffer a set back to our early and fragile victory from Evil Permissions.