TuringLang / TuringLang/AbstractPPL.jl
Ban `VarName`s with ranges or `Colon`s in the middle
Nobody has claimed this yet.
- Dominant language
- Julia
- Stars
- 28
- Forks
- 12
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Description
These sorts of VarNames are non-sense, and I think the constructor should call them out and error:
julia> @varname(a.b[1:4].c)
a.b[1:4].c
What would this mean? It could mean get the elements a.b[1:4] and get the field .c for each of them. However, that's not what this does in Julia. Rather, in Julia, indexing like that tries to get the field .c of the object a.b[1:4], which is probably an Array that only has fields ref and size. I don't think that's ever the thing we want to do in a probabilistic programming language context. Hence I think VarNames should allow an IndexLens with ranges or Colons only as the last lens.
Note that this should of course still be fine: @varname(a.b[2].c)
Contributor guide
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start at the VarName constructor and the @varname entry point, then trace how IndexLens values are represented. Review existing validation tests if present; done means ranges and Colons are rejected in the middle while a scalar index such as [2] remains valid there.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- julia
- Domain
- machine-learning
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 3/5
- Estimated time
- 1-2 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 45/100