Clojure REPL and escape characters in strings

[DjebbZ]

Hi,

First thanks for the plugin. Learning Clojure with it is a delightful experience.

I'm encountering a strange behaviour when I evaluate characters and regexps from my code. When I type #{\a \b} in the REPL, it returns itself normally. When I send this same code from my editor to the REPL, it fails with :

user=> (load-string "#{\a \b}")

RuntimeException Unsupported escape character: \a  clojure.lang.Util.runtimeException (Util.java:219)
RuntimeException Unmatched delimiter: }  clojure.lang.Util.runtimeException (Util.java:219)
RuntimeException EOF while reading string  clojure.lang.Util.runtimeException (Util.java:219)

So I have to double-escape every single characters, as well as special chars from regexps like so #{\\a \\b} so I can send them to the REPL from my code.

Is this behaviour normal ? To be expected ? A bug ? As I started to learn Clojure (my first Lisp ever) I may not know several things about how code and REPL differ. Any explanations very welcome.

[mason-stewart]

Hi @DjebbZ,
The load-string functionality has been discussed (among many other things) in #212, particularly here: #212 (comment)

Just for reference, the code in question is at https://github.com/wuub/SublimeREPL/blob/master/text_transfer.py#L80 and the commit that introduced it is here 71d0092

I believe @lionandoil added that to allow syntax errors to be thrown immediately, rather than trying to accidentally evaluate a single, incomplete line or selection, i.e. (foo bar and then having the REPL hang as it waits for the form to be closed.

@lionandoil should the sender automatically double-escape the string? In Emacs, Paredit-mode will convert (- 42 (int \A)) into "(- 42 (int \\A))" when Shift' is pressed while a form is selected, but not when " is manually typed at the beginning and end of a form. I supposed the Clojure sender could convert single backslashes into doubles before eval?

Would implementing that cause other issues? Thanks!

[lionandoil]

Heyho, yes I just tried and squeezing a

.replace('\\', r'\\')

between the strip() and the other replace() should indeed do the trick. I'm quite busy at the moment so if someone else could make that pull request that'd be grand!

[mason-stewart]

Yep, I'll take care of it today. Thanks dude!

[DjebbZ]

Thanks !
I relaunched ST (3) but no update yet... Any idea when will it be published on Package Control ?

[wuub]

Probably this Sunday. Sorry. :(

I'm trying to find time to do a release for two weeks now, it takes a LOT
of time (ST2 stable, ST2 dev, St3 beta, ST3 dev on Win/Linux/Mac) and I
haven't been able to squeeze it into my schedule recently.

[DjebbZ]

No problem, SublimeREPL is already super nice like this for a beginner like me. 2 weeks is quick enough :)

[wuub]

@DjebbZ I'll need one or two more days :) Unfortunately I was not able to do it today :(

[DjebbZ]

No problem ! You take your contribution very seriously, I really appreciate. I'm not using Clojure nor SublimeREPL in production, so take it easy :)

[eeng]

Hi, this plugin has been of great help to me, so thank you very much!
Just one problem though, I'm experiencing this bug too. Is there a possibility that the fix has not been published yet on the Package Control?