Fl4m3Ph03n1x

Fl4m3Ph03n1x

Background

I am playing around with defguard in macro I am defining. The macro has an opaque type and I think dialyzer is having issues with this:

macro:

defmodule NewType do

  defmacro deftype(name, type) do
    quote do
      defmodule unquote(name) do
        @opaque t :: {unquote(name), unquote(type)}

        @spec new(value :: unquote(type)) :: t
        def new(value) when is_binary(value), do: {unquote(name), value}

        @spec extract(new_type :: t) :: unquote(type)
        def extract({unquote(name), value}), do: value
      end
    end
  end

  defguard is_type?(value, mod)
           when is_tuple(value) and
                  elem(value, 0) == mod and is_binary(elem(value, 1))
end

In theory, an invocation of deftype Name, String.t() would generate:

defmodule Name do
   @opaque t :: {Name, String.t}

  @spec new(value :: String.t()) :: t
  def new(value) when is_binary(value), do: {Name, value}

  @spec extract(new_type :: t) :: String.t()
  def extract({Name, value}), do: value
end

And in fact, this code works as intended:

type.ex (module where I define several types)

defmodule Type do
  import NewType
  
  deftype Name, String.t()
end

test.ex

defmodule Test do
  alias Type.Name

  @spec print(Name.t()) :: binary
  def print(name), do: Name.extract(name)
end

Problem

The problem arises when I try to use the guard:

test.ex

defmodule Test do
  import NewType
  alias Type.Name

  @spec print(Name.t()) :: binary
  def print(name) when is_type?(name, Name), do: Name.extract(name)
end

Everything runs as expected, but dialyzer does not see it the same way:

lib/test.ex:6:no_return
Function print/1 has no local return.
________________________________________________________________________________
lib/test.ex:6:call_without_opaque
Function call without opaqueness type mismatch.

Call does not have expected opaque term of type Type.Name.t() in the 1st position.

Type.Name.extract(_name :: tuple())

________________________________________________________________________________
done (warnings were emitted)
Halting VM with exit status 2

Even though Name.extract does receive a Name.t as a parameter, dialyzer states otherwise.
At this point, I think this might be because I am “exposing” the internal data structure in the guard with is_tuple, but at the same time, I don’t see how else I can have defguard and still use opaque types.

Question

Am I missing something?

Showing Posts 1 to 1

NobbZ

NobbZ

Dialyzer ignores the spec of Test.print/1, when it has other ways to infer the type of the argument. Due to the use of the is_type?/1 guard, dialyzer infers that the type has to be tuple(). tuple() is not Name.t().

If you deal with opaque types, you can not manually create them, you can not destructure them, you can not use them in guards. You have to pass them around as they are. Only functions in Name are allowed to access its internals.

— All posts loaded —

Where Next? Top

Trending in Questions Top

stjefim
Hello! Suppose you are building workflow (order / task / payment) processing system with the following requirements: Each workflow con...
New
water
I’m aware of 2 such projects, are there others? git: GitHub - team-alembic/realworld: A fullstack Phoenix LiveView application with back...
New
itzmidinesh
Hi all, I’m working on a Phoenix project where I need to make external HTTP requests and I’m trying to choose between Req and HTTPoison....
New
peck
Hi everyone. My team and I have been working on a fairly modest app based around video streaming and chat, but we’ve landed a customer t...
New
leoschweizer
Hi, we run different LLM models across a cluster, with each node loading a configurable subset. Model-specific queues let nodes consume ...
New
csmr
Hi all, I’m new here and would like to hear peoples views on my Elixir/Phoenix based game-engine! :smiley: Mutonex gamedesign was finish...
New
Stef-Verniers
Hello I’ve been coding in Elixir for almost two years now because of my current job where we implemented Elixir in our application. But ...
New

Other Trending Topics Top

dominicletz
Hey there, I haven’t seen a list of useful Elixir specific skills for the popular AI tools yet so I’m starting one here with my first. ...
New
raa-ziq
Hi everyone :waving_hand: I wanted to share something I’ve been building — NowBlind, a random chat app designed to help people discover ...
New
mudasobwa
I fully migrated to my own harness from Anthropic/Gemini and I think it’s time to share it. Welcome DSH, the DeepSeek Harness, fully writ...
New
KristerV
Hey. Is there anyone here who creates agents in their apps? Not talking about using agents, but creating them. I’m finding it pretty diff...
New
OndrejValenta
(I just needed to vent somewhere and LinkedIn is full of hope, or hype, I’m not sure which exactly) AI dream has many faces, but general...
New
webofbits
With AI doing more of the implementation work, I’ve been wondering how much coding I should deliberately keep doing myself. My main conc...
#ai
New

We're in Beta

About us Mission Statement

Options

Thread Display Mode




Thread Preview

Skip Thread Previews