Pep & Nom

Dumb people write code that only geniuses can understand. Smart people write code that dumb people can understand. mjb at nomlang.org

the nom "system" command

Executes the system command in the workspace and reads the result into the workspace.

 clear; add "echo $PATH"; system; print; clear; quit;

notes

This command can actually be used to implement interactive 'conversation' scripts, where the script prompts the user for some information and the user replies. The actual conversation loop would be implemented in some other language (ruby: this is called /eg/nom-chat.rb ) but all of the conversation logic is contained in the nom script.

A demonstration of this technique could be an implementation of the “Eliza” program (which is a simple jungian psychologist mimicker).

The script /eg/chat.timeline.pss shows a useful implementation of a chatbot which is written with nom. It also uses a ruby script to provide the loop to read input from the user. The chat.time.pss uses the script /eg/timeline.tohtml.pss to compile the historical timeline into html. But I will probably just use /eg/text.tohtml.pss instead and provide it with a different style-sheet.

 ./nom-chat.rb chat.timeline.pss

examples

The nom fragment below responds to a sentence

    # fragment

    # read the input word-by-word
    while [:space:]; clear;
    whilenot [:space:]; put; 
    "this","that","it" {
      "that","it" { clear; add "this"; }
      put; clear; add "this*"; push; .reparse
    }

    "print","type","show","delete","del","remove","rm" {
      # make the actions canonical
      "type","show" { clear; add "print"; }
      "del","remove","rm" { clear; add "delete"; }

      put; clear; add "action*"; push; .reparse
    }
    !"" {
      clear; add "unknown word: "; get; add "\n"; print; quit;
      # trigger the error/help system here.
    }

  parse>
    pop; pop;
    "action*this*" {
      clear; get; "print" {
        clear; add "sed -n '/^ *this:/{s/^ *this://;p}' state.txt";
        system; put; clear; 
        add "cat "; get; put; clear;
      }
      clear; add "command*"; .reparse
    }
    (eof) {
      "command*" {
      }
    }
    push; push;
  

more notes

This command is very powerful, and I hesitated before adding it to the pep-nom system because I wanted to keep pep and nom as simple as possible, adhering to it’s core tenet of being a language parser. But I think this command does not deviate from nom's “core mission” because it only reads text into the machine. It also should allow nom to be used in my “Tiny Language” Model" experiments, which is to create scripts that accept simple plain English queries and actions and then execute them.

retro html formatted by nom comments/suggestions to: mjb at nomlang dot org