String vs. Symbol vs. InstanceName

[gitttt]

The below code outputs:

---
/path/to/binary
<class 'str'>
---
/path2/to/binary
<class 'clips.common.Symbol'>
---
/path2/to/binary
<class 'str'>

Is this how it is supposed to be? Isn't there a type InstanceName? How can I know from python if I have (slotname [a_string])
or

(slotname "a_string")

?

import clips


env = clips.Environment()


binary_class_string = """
(defclass clips_BINARY (is-a USER)
  (slot path)
  (slot path2)
  (slot path3))
"""
env.build(binary_class_string)

network_function_class_string = """
(defclass clips_NETWORK_FUNCTION (is-a USER)
  (slot binary)
  (slot start_address))
"""
env.build(network_function_class_string)


make_binary_instance_string = """
(make-instance UniversalSample.exe of clips_BINARY (path [/path/to/binary]) (path2 /path2/to/binary) (path3 "/path2/to/binary"))
"""

env.eval(make_binary_instance_string)
instance_just_created = env.find_instance("UniversalSample.exe")
print(instance_just_created)

make_network_function_instance_string = """
(make-instance my_func of clips_NETWORK_FUNCTION (binary [UniversalSample.exe])(start_address 4278884))
"""

env.eval(make_network_function_instance_string)
instance_just_created = env.find_instance("my_func")
print(instance_just_created)
print(type(instance_just_created["binary"]))
linked_instance = env.find_instance(instance_just_created["binary"])
print(linked_instance)

print("---")
print(linked_instance['path'])
print(type(linked_instance['path']))

print("---")
print(linked_instance['path2'])
print(type(linked_instance['path2']))

print("---")
print(linked_instance['path3'])
print(type(linked_instance['path3']))

[noxdafox]

This is indeed a bug.

From chapter 2.3.1 Data Types of the Basic Programming Guide:

An instance-name is formed by enclosing a symbol within left and right brackets.

Therefore, type(instance_just_created['binary']) should be Symbol and not str. Yet, it would still remain difficult to distinguish an instance name from a Symbol on the Python side. What I could do, is add another class InstanceName which inherits from Symbol.

Keep in mind that Symbol already inherits from str so the inheritance chain would be: str <-- Symbol <-- InstanceName.

This means you will need to pay attention if you are discriminating the types as isinstance(InstanceName('foo'), str) will return True similarly as for isinstance(True, int).

In other words, this is the right comparison order:

if isinstance(var, InstanceName):
    print("%s is an Instance Name" % var)
elif isinstance(var, Symbol):
    print("%s is a Symbol" % var)
elif isinstance(var, str):
    print("%s is a String" % var)

[gitttt]

Having InstanceName would be the right solution, indeed. It is how pyclips solves this.

[noxdafox]

Issue fixed in 985d710, will make a release next weekend.

[noxdafox]

This issue should be fixed in version 0.3.2. The new release also fixes a crash sporadically occurring with user-defined routers.

Windows builds 3.5-3.7 have been uploaded too.