nimforum mirror - Using Unicode in procedure and variable names

koistinen (orginal) [2023-07-24T21:48:16+02:00] view original

In https://github.com/Koistinen/chess/blob/main/chess.nim I am using the unicode flexibility Nim allows:

type Piece = enum
  ♚ = -6, ♛, ♜, ♝, ♞, ♟, □, ♙, ♘, ♗, ♖, ♕, ♔

type Pos* = object # 64 bytes
  bd: array[0..63, Piece]
  g50: int
  side: int
  ep: int
  castling: int

proc StartingPos: Pos =
  result.bd = [
    ♖,♘,♗,♕,♔,♗,♘,♖,
    ♙,♙,♙,♙,♙,♙,♙,♙,
    □,□,□,□,□,□,□,□,
    □,□,□,□,□,□,□,□,
    □,□,□,□,□,□,□,□,
    □,□,□,□,□,□,□,□,
    ♟,♟,♟,♟,♟,♟,♟,♟,
    ♜,♞,♝,♛,♚,♝,♞,♜]
  result.castling = 0xf

In the future I am planning to use variable names like ♔sq for the square of the white king. My understanding is that this is not guaranteed for the future but it is likely that only unicode characters that are likely to be used as operators and similar will likely cause the code to break if used in this way.

Am I right in my understanding?

I have not seen others use Nim this way, what examples are there?

Any comments on my code? (It is supposed to prioritize clarity and not care about speed.)

ElegantBeef (orginal) [2023-07-24T22:00:15+02:00] view original

Due to how Nim does operators only a few unicode characters will be reserved to operators, the rest will just be normal identifiers. Documented here: http://nim-lang.github.io/Nim/manual.html#lexical-analysis-unicode-operators

demotomohiro (orginal) [2023-07-24T22:53:43+02:00] view original

When we talk about unicode in Nim code, someone usually complain that they don't have a keyboard to type unicode. So I introduce a nice Vim command to type unicode characters.

:abbreviate king ♔

Then, when you type 'king' and an non-alphabet character, it automatically replaced with '♔'.

Examples:

abbreviate noteq ≠
abbreviate cong ≡
abbreviate notcong ≢
abbreviate sigma Σ
abbreviate sqroot √
abbreviate curoot ∛
abbreviate blspade ♠
abbreviate whspade ♤

Araq (orginal) [2023-07-24T23:11:51+02:00] view original

The unicode is fine but array[0..63, Piece] should be array[8, array[8, Piece]]. Don't worry about the nesting, it has no overhead.

xigoi (orginal) [2023-07-24T23:58:22+02:00] view original

What if they later want to allow chessboards o| different sizes? seq[seq[T]] has overhead over a flat seq.

ElegantBeef (orginal) [2023-07-25T00:22:55+02:00] view original

It's not too bad too type unicode on X11, it's just ctrl + shift + u followed by the value. But truthfully who needs anything but '‽'‽

hugosenario (orginal) [2023-07-25T04:25:24+02:00] view original

I have not seen others use Nim this way, what examples are there?

from std/random import randomize, sample

randomize()

type
  ✊🤚✌️ = enum
    ✊, 🤚, ✌️
  🏆     = enum
    👈, 🤷, 👉

proc `>`(👤, 👥: ✊🤚✌️): bool =
  👤 == 🤚 and 👥 == ✊ or
  👤 == ✌️ and 👥 == 🤚 or
  👤 == ✊ and 👥 == ✌️

proc 👋(👤, 👥: ✊🤚✌️): 🏆 =
  if   👤 == 👥: 🤷
  elif 👤 >  👥: 👈
  else:          👉

proc 🆚(👤, 👥: ✊🤚✌️): void =
  echo(👤, "  ", 👤.👋 👥 , "  ", 👥)

template ❓: ✊🤚✌️ =
  sample([✊, 🤚, ✌️])

✊.🆚 ✊
🤚.🆚 ✊
✌️.🆚 ✊
✊.🆚 🤚
🤚.🆚 🤚
✌️.🆚 🤚
✊.🆚 ✌️
🤚.🆚 ✌️
✌️.🆚 ✌️
❓.🆚 ✊
✊.🆚 ❓
❓.🆚 ❓

Araq (orginal) [2023-07-25T08:43:52+02:00] view original

What if they later want to allow chessboards o| different sizes? seq[seq[T]] has overhead over a flat seq.

Good one. Chessboards are 8x8 and an array is not a seq.

Vindaar (orginal) [2023-07-25T10:16:25+02:00] view original

I have not seen others use Nim this way, what examples are there?

I use Nim's unicode support rather extensively.

Unchained (CT physical unit checking) (ab)uses unicode identifiers to construct products of units, e.g. 1.keV⁻¹•cm⁻²•s⁻¹ and the like

Measuremancer uses the support for some of the unicode characters that can act as infix characters to define measurements with uncertainties, 5.0 ± 1.0. Also uses it internally for identifiers for derivatives, names with ∂ etc.

other libraries of mine use unicode symbols quite a bit where it makes sense from a physics perspective to keep symbols more in line with expectation, i.e. xrayAttenuation uses things like λ for wavelength, ρ for densities and so on

just to give some examples.

grd (orginal) [2023-07-25T11:54:09+02:00] view original

Wow!

koistinen (orginal) [2023-07-25T20:27:10+02:00] view original

: The unicode is fine but array[0..63, Piece] should be array[8, array[8, Piece]]. Don't worry about the nesting, it has no overhead.

For a normal chess engine, this would be fine. I am going for a tablebase generator that might be able to generate 11-man endgames and to be able to do that I need to use whole squares indices and an indexing scheme that separates out 3 bits which stay invariant under all three rotations. That way required ram and communication might be kept down, allowing for a distributed compute solution.

koistinen (orginal) [2023-07-25T20:34:39+02:00] view original

For variable size boards, I'd recommend rewriting the code for that special case. No need for one library to do everything chess related. Readability is more important than generality. A simpler library is easier to rewrite for your special use case. Maybe you would want an infinite board: then you can't have a cell for every square anyway, maybe a piece list would be a better representation then.

koistinen (orginal) [2023-07-25T20:39:15+02:00] view original

It's not too bad to use web search to find the symbol and then use copy and paste to get it into your code either.

koistinen (orginal) [2023-07-26T20:57:48+02:00] view original

On further thought, maybe using 2*3 bits rather than 6 bits would improve readability, also for the special indexing scheme.

domogled (orginal) [2023-07-30T21:15:19+02:00] view original

I have not seen others use Nim this way, what examples are there?

type Zodiak* = enum
    ♈︎ = (1, "♈︎") ## | Beran    | Κριός/Kriós        | Aries       |  Meṣa
    ♉︎ = "♉︎" ## | Býk      | Ταῦρος/Tauros      | Taurus      |  Vṛṣabha
    ♊︎ = "♊︎" ## | Blíženci | Δίδυμοι/Didymoi    | Gemini      |  Mithuna
    ♋︎ = "♋︎" ## | Rak      | Καρκῖνος/Karkīnos  | Cancer      |  Karkaṭa
    ♌︎ = "♌︎" ## | Lev      | Λέων/Léōn          | Leo         |  Siṃha
    ♍︎ = "♍︎" ## | Panna    | Παρθένος/Parthénos | Virgo       |  Kanyā
    ♎︎ = "♎︎" ## | Váhy     | Ζυγός/Zygós        | Libra       |  Tulā
    ♏︎ = "♏︎" ## | Štír     | Σκоρπιός/Skorpiós  | Scorpius    |  Vṛścika
    ♐︎ = "♐︎" ## | Střelec  | Τοξότης/Toxótēs    | Sagittarius |  Dhanuṣa
    ♑︎ = "♑︎" ## | Kozoroh  | Αἰγόκερως/Aigókerōs| Capricornus |  Makara
    ♒︎ = "♒︎" ## | Vodnář   | Ὑδροχόος/Hydrochóos| Aquarius    |  Kumbha
    ♓︎ = "♓︎" ## | Ryby     | Ἰχθύες/Ichthýes    | Pisces      |  Mīna

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