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I have been experimenting with Lambda expressions in Oxygene. Very simple recursive lambda expression to calculate a fibonacci number :
var fib : Func<int32, int32>;
fib := n -> iif(n > 1, fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2), n);
fib(3);
When I run this code I get a nullreferenceexception. Any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?
433
You aren't doing anything wrong. If anything, the compiler should warn you about using fib, an unassigned variable, inside the body of the lambda.
However the compiler ought to be capturing fib as a location, so that when the assignment completes and the delegate is later invoked, fib is properly assigned and recursion should work as expected.
The most obvious possible reason for the failure is that Prism isn't capturing locations, but values, which would be grossly unintuitive and at odds with every other closure implementation in non-pure languages.
For example, try this code in JavaScript (contrary to Craig's assertion in the comments to this post, JavaScript also captures locations, not values):
<html>
<head>
<script language='javascript'>
function main()
{
var x = 1;
var f = function() { return x; };
alert(f());
x = 2;
alert(f());
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type=button onclick="javascript:main()"></input>
</body>
</html>
The alert boxes after you click on the button show 1 and 2 respectively, while following Prism/Oxygene semantics they would show 1 both times.
65
Steve:
The issue has apparently been addressed in Delphi Prism 2010. The following code sample works in the official release.
var fib : Func<int32, int32>;
fib := n -> iif(n > 1, fib(n - 1) + fib(n - 2), n);
var i := fib(9); //1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34
MessageBox.Show(i.ToString);
The MessageBox shows the value 34.
In response to Jeroen's question, this code was run in the original, official release build, 3.0.21.661.
38
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