tonsky / tonsky/datascript

Rules - Required bindings doesn't evaluate correctly

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Clojure
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Description

Attempting to follow the Datomic Rules with required bindings documentation and discovered this bug in DataScript.

Here's a short example:

 (d/q '[:find ?need
            :in $ % ?name
            :where (needs ?name ?need)]
    '[["george" :wants :foo]
      ["george" :needs :foo]
      ["sally"  :needs :bar]]
    '[[(needs ?name ?need) [?name :needs ?need]]] "george")
;; => #{[:foo]} (expected)

;; Now try with ?name being a required binding by placing it in brackets
;; -- (needs ?name ?need) -> (needs [?name] ?need)

(d/q '[:find ?need
            :in $ % ?name
            :where (needs ?name ?need)]
    '[["george" :wants :foo]
      ["george" :needs :foo]
      ["sally"  :needs :bar]]
    '[[(needs [?name] ?need) [?name :needs ?need]]] "george")
;; => #{[:foo :bar]} (incorrect)

It may be that the required binding version is always evaluating to true.

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by reproducing the two d/q examples from the issue and compare the results for ordinary and required bindings. Read the linked Datomic Rules documentation for the intended required-binding semantics, then trace DataScript's Datalog rule evaluation to find why the required binding admits :bar. Done means the second query returns only #{[:foo]}.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
clojure
Domain
databases
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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