65 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
65 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
# Squiggle Language
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Squiggle is a language for representing probability distributions, as well as
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functions that return probability distributions. Its original intended use is
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for improving epistemics around EA decisions.
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This package, @squiggle/lang, contains the core language of squiggle. The main
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feature revolves around evaluating squiggle expressions. Currently the package
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only exports a single function, named "run", which from a squiggle string returns
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an object representing the result of the evaluation.
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If using this package for tests or as a dependency, typescript typings are available
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and recommended to be used.
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## Building this package
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This package doesn't have any dependencies on any other packages within the monorepo,
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so if you wish you can generally ignore lerna or yarn workspaces when dealing
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with this package in particular.
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First, as per any node package, you will need to install dependencies, we recommend
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using [yarn](https://classic.yarnpkg.com/en/).
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```bash
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yarn
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```
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This package is mainly written in [ReScript](https://rescript-lang.org/). But has
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a typescript interface.
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ReScript has an interesting philosophy of not providing much in the way of effective
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build tools. Every ReScript file is compiled into .bs.js and .gen.ts files with the same name
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and same location, and then you can use these files in other js files to
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create your program. To generate these files to build the package, you run
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`yarn build`.
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```bash
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yarn build
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```
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.gen.ts files are created by [genType](https://rescript-lang.org/docs/gentype/latest/getting-started),
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which creates typescript typings for needed parts of the codebase so that they
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can be easily used in typescript. These .gen.ts files reference the .bs.js files
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generated by rescript.
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You can also go `yarn start` for the purposes of watching for file changes and
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rebuilding every time there is one.
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Finally, `yarn test` runs the current test suite over the language.
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You may notice sometimes, that there are errors about the `rationale` package.
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If you ever get these errors, `yarn build` should fix this issue. These errors
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occur because `yarn build` also needs to create build files that are in `node_modules`.
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So if you replace `node_modules` you may need to rebuild to get those files back.
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## Distributing this package or using this package from other monorepo packages
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If you would like to distribute this package, run `yarn package` to compile all the js
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and typescript into the `dist` directory. This `dist` directory code is what's
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referenced by other packages in the monorepo.
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## Using this package
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The return type of this packages only experted function `run` is currently quite
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complicated, as it has to return either a number, or a distribution, or even
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a representation of a function of distributions. Currently the export is simply
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the generated type that rescript creates, and can be quite confusing. We therefore
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highly recommend the use of typescript when creating tests or using this package.
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