World: r3wp

page: read/custom [ scheme: 'http host: "twitter.com" target: "direct_messages/new.xml" 
user: "my-twitter-id" pass: "mypassword" ]  [ POST "text=This was 
also sent from a Rebol&user=synapse_emr" ]


This sends a private tweet to a user ... not clear from the API docs 
what the call is to just tweet ... anyone know?

ooops ... wrong group.

this is easy to figure out using firebug  ;-)


redirect the html page to a server you have cheyenne running and 
save out the whole http request, you will have url and post data 
:-)

just reinstall wireshark

But there is a  twitter restful api ... just can't find it there. 
  Must be blind.

too bad accumulate is not in the core, I totally ditched python for 
any further work because guido v.r. removed the basic (quite poor) 
functional constructs it had

If that so, most of existing mezzanines should be fired into external 
modules.
Because i use mezzanines only to test some ideas.

But if have to do the "real work", then i use only natives. Don't 
ask why, it's obvious.

Don''t you end up then writing your own mezzanines?

to me one of great beauties of rebol is that all stuff are expressions 
like "either" and by so composable ..  and that you don't need explicit 
return statements.. two of big features that I think aid more functional 
(not imperative) design of programs...

but they they have to be strictly adapted for their purposes, so 
i remove code related to needless use cases.

speed is a priority especially with Rebol which can be really slow 
if you don't take care

functional:

reduce [ "hi " (either is-male? gender [ "boy" ] [ "girl" ]) , "how 
are you?" ]

vs imperativeish:
a: "hi "
either is-male? gender [ append a "boy" ] [ append a "girl" ]
append a " How are you?"
a

so although I got impression from Carl's blogposts that he thinks 
rebol should be practical vs. functional , I think a lot of it's 
power and elegance and practicality come from functional aspects 
of it (just expressing my opinion)

( ok, my memory was bad, Carl only said rebol is not Pure Functional 
PL , which is totally different thing and I don't want it to be pure 
functional :) )

http://www.rebol.com/article/0206.html

i think the power of rebol comes from the big amount of small code 
schemes so that by combining only some of them you can do all you 
want.
It's the main difference with other functional languages.
The amount of natives schemes and data types.

Adding more and more natives schemes (like matrix operations on series) 
is the way to get Rebol more and more powerful

the unification of series management is one of the major sources 
of code reduction in rebol.

the other is the fact that series are mutable, and many functions 
edit the input series directly.

even more so in R3  :-)

This works ... posting a message is actually called updating your 
status!


 page: read/custom [ scheme: 'http host: "twitter.com" target: "statuses/update.xml" 
 user: "my-twitter-id" pass: "mypassword" ]  [ POST "status=Playing 
 with REBOL and the Twitter API" ]

interesting, can you post other messages than "status=" ?

(never used twitter)

http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Twitter-API-Documentation

is there a quick way to tell if an integer overflows?

I'm missing an overflow? function:

overflow? 632479375863785946758934675892
== true

int-overflow?: func [n [number!]] [error? try [to-integer n]]

hmm.. yes, thanks.

unfortunately this might not work... to-integer sometimes returns 
a decimal... unlesss its been fixed for 2.7.6

It should work - always return integer! or error! - if the input 
is a number! (as specified in the type test of the argument. TO-INTEGER 
would  only have that problem with string input.

aaah yes... missed the input type ... sorry.

any good reason apart from the fact that data is a block that this 
is not allowed?

forskip data: [ 1 2 3 4 ] 2 [ ]

but you have to do:

data: [ 1 2 3 4 ]
forskip data 2 [ ... ]

cause the word is being used as the index.

probably cause in the time frame of evaluation the set word happens 
after the forskip hits it.

Is that a good reason?  :)

the assignment I mean.

USAGE:
    FORSKIP 'word skip-num body

Yep, the set-word gets assign to word, the [1 2 3 4] gets assigned 
to skip-num, and 2 gets assigned to body, because of the lit-word 
argument in forskip

Maybe this should be changed so that a default word is used instead 
...

if a lit-word is not supplied as an argument but a block

Perhaps split the iteration word argument from the data argument, 
like 'foreach has?

seems a reasonable suggestion.

FORALL and FORSKIP are faster than FOREACH in R3 because they don't 
have a local word that requires a BIND/copy of the code.

You don't notice this in R2 because they're mezzanine and all of 
that overhead is greater, but it is noticable in R3 where they are 
native.

Wouldn't it be more efficient to just BIND instead of BIND/copy body 
blocks in loops by default, and additionnally provide a /copy refinement 
in the (very) rare cases where you don't want the body block to be 
modified? Is it a design decision or did I missed some obvious reason?

You have to BIND/copy or *EACH would not be recursion-safe (or task-safe 
in R3).

I thought about the upcoming task! support but forgot about the "recursion" 
case. I might have wrote only 3 or 4 functions in 10 years of coding 
in REBOL that fall in that case (that's why in R2, it could have 
been no-copy by default). But tasking in R3 should make it more frequent 
I guess.

I guess I write more recursive code than you do :)

That's very possible, I use recursion only when the gain in code 
size or clarity looks obvious. Also, not having tail-call optimization 
doesn't push you much toward recursive approach in the general case.

I use it for building or processing recursive data structures - it's 
faster for that, tail-call-optimized or not. I only switch to iteration 
and hacks if the data blows the stack, which is rare.

The recursive calls limit used to be quite low (150-200 calls), has 
that limit been extended in recent 2.7.x versions?