This is not fully satisfactory as it pollutes a bit the prelude. Ideally, those functions should only be visible
and usable by the underlying trace code. But for now, we'll just go with it.
This commit introduces a new feature into
the parser, typechecker, and formatter.
The work for code gen will be in the next commit.
I was able to leverage some existing infrastructure
by making using of `AssignmentPattern`. A new field
`is` was introduced into `IfBranch`. This field holds
a generic `Option<Is>` meaning a new generic has to be
introduced into `IfBranch`. When used in `UntypedExpr`,
`IfBranch` must use `AssignmentPattern`. When used in
`TypedExpr`, `IfBranch` must use `TypedPattern`.
The parser was updated such that we can support this
kind of psuedo grammar:
`if <expr:condition> [is [<pattern>: ]<annotation>]`
This can be read as, when parsing an `if` expression,
always expect an expression after the keyword `if`. And then
optionally there may be this `is` stuff, and within that you
may optionally expect a pattern followed by a colon. We will
always expect an annotation.
This first expression is still saved as the field
`condition` in `IfBranch`. If `pattern` is not there
AND `expr:condition` is `UntypedExpr::Var` we can set
the pattern to be `Pattern::Var` with the same name. From
there shadowing should allow this syntax sugar to feel
kinda magical within the `IfBranch` block that follow.
The typechecker doesn't need to be aware of the sugar
described above. The typechecker looks at `branch.is`
and if it's `Some(is)` then it'll use `infer_assignment`
for some help. Because of the way that `is` can inject
variables into the scope of the branch's block and since
it's basically just like how `expect` works minus the error
we get to re-use that helper method.
It's important to note that in the typechecker, if `is`
is `Some(_)` then we do not enforce that `condition` is
of type `Bool`. This is because the bool itself will be
whether or not the `is` itself holds true given a PlutusData
payload.
When `is` is None, we do exactly what was being done
previously so that plain `if` expressions remain unaffected
with no semantic changes.
The formatter had to be made aware of the new changes with
some simple changes that need no further explanation.
This is mainly a syntactic trick/sugar, but it's been pretty annoying
to me for a while that we can't simply pattern-match/destructure
single-variant constructors directly from the args list. A classic
example is when writing property tests:
```ak
test foo(params via both(bytearray(), int())) {
let (bytes, ix) = params
...
}
```
Now can be replaced simply with:
```
test foo((bytes, ix) via both(bytearray(), int())) {
...
}
```
If feels natural, especially coming from the JavaScript, Haskell or
Rust worlds and is mostly convenient. Behind the scene, the compiler
does nothing more than re-writing the AST as the first form, with
pre-generated arg names. Then, we fully rely on the existing
type-checking capabilities and thus, works in a seamless way as if we
were just pattern matching inline.
There's no reasons for this to be a property of only ArgName::Named to begin with. And now, with the extra indirection introduced for arg_name, it may leads to subtle issues when patterns args are used in validators.
I slightly altered the way we parse import definitions to ensure we
merge imports from the same modules (that aren't aliased) together.
This prevents an annoying warning with duplicated import lines and
makes it just more convenient overall.
As a trade-off, we can no longer interleave import definitions with
other definitions. This should be a minor setback only since the
formatter was already ensuring that all import definitions would be
grouped at the top.
---
Note that, I originally attempted to implement this in the formatter
instead of the parser. As it felt more appropriate there. However, the
formatter operates on (unmutable) borrowed definitions, which makes it
annoyingly hard to perform any AST manipulations. The `Document`
returns by the format carries a lifetime that prevents the creation of
intermediate local values.
So instead, slightly tweaking the parser felt like the right thing to
do.
While we agree on the idea of having some ways of emitting events, the
design hasn't been completely fleshed out and it is unclear whether
events should have a well-defined format independent of the framework
/ compiler and what this format should be.
So we need more time discussing and agreeing about what use case we
are actually trying to solve with that.
Irrespective of that, some cleanup was also needed on the UPLC side
anyway since the PR introduced a lot of needless duplications.
