boilerplate-compiler

Boilerplate Compiler

This is a compiler for boilerplate. It has two parts:

• Parser takes a boilerplate program (grid) and produces an AST. (Well, its a graph not a tree. ASG?)
• js-codegen takes a parsed boilerplate program and produces javascript which can be run to figure out what will happen.

Caveats:

• The compiler won't compile boilerplate worlds where two shuttles could move into the same cell. (Even if they won't ever actually do that!)
• The compiled output has a super primitive API. I need to add helper functions for querying pressure.
• No support for buttons.

Usage

npm install boilerplate-compiler

Then compile something:

compiler = require('boilerplate-compiler');

// Compile the grid in "myfile.json"
compiler.compileFile("myfile.json", opts);

// Compile the specified grid
var grid = {"0,0":"shuttle","1,0":"nothing","2,0":"negative"};
compiler.compileGrid(grid, opts);

Options is optional, and can contain:

• stream: The stream to compile to. Compilation is syncronous, but stream writes can be asyncronous. If not specified, the compiler will output to process.stdout.
• fillMode: One of 'all', 'shuttles', 'engines'. Specifies where the generated code fills pressure from. Defaults to either shuttles or engines, whichever is smaller. If you need to know the pressure in all regions (instead of just the regions which push shuttles), you should explicitly set fillMode to 'engines'.
• module: One of 'bare', 'node' or 'fn'. Defaults to 'node'.
  • 'bare' mode creates a function body.
  • 'node' creates a nodejs module.
  • 'fn' creates a self calling closure-wrapped function.

Compiler output

The compiler output produces a module which returns an object with {states:[0,1,3,1,...], step:function(){...})}. The states array is initialized with all shuttles in the positions specified in the initial grid. The step function reads from & writes back new states to the state array.

Internally, the compiled code calculates the pressure of lots of regions. However, it doesn't expose these values yet.

Parser output

The parser produces a (somewhat giant) structure of data through the course of analysing the grid. The format of this structure is still in flux, and it may change between compiler minor versions.

You can parse data using:

compiler = require('boilerplate-compiler');

// parse the grid in "myfile.json"
var ast = compiler.parseFile("myfile.json");

// Compile the specified grid
var grid = {"0,0":"shuttle","1,0":"nothing","2,0":"negative"};
var ast = compiler.parse(grid);

At a glance, it contains:

• grid: The original grid.
• shuttles: A list of shuttles.
• regions: A list of regions in the grid.
• engines: A list of engines
• shuttleGrid: A grid which maps x,y to the ID (index) of a shuttle.
• engineGrid: A grid which maps x,y to the ID (index) of an engine.
• edgeGrid: A grid mapping x,y,isTop to the ID of the contained region.

Shuttles

Each shuttle is flood filled to find all the cells the shuttle could occupy. We do this even if its impossible for the shuttle to actually move there (there's no engines, for example). The result is that part of the grid is occupied by a sort of probability cloud of the shuttle's states.

Each state that the shuttle could move to is numbered from 0. States are always sorted top-to-bottom then left-to-right.

The parser outputs the shuttle list as:

• points: List of points {x:x,y:y,v:value (shuttle/thinshuttle)} in the shuttle in its initial position
• immobile: Bool, true if the shuttle can't move.
• type: The shuttle's type. One of:
  • immobile: The shuttle can't move
  • switch: The shuttle has exactly 2 states. The top/left state is state 0, and the bottom/right state is state 1.
  • track: The shuttle moves along 1 axis (x or y). States are numbered from 0 (most left / top state) along the track.
  • statemachine: The shuttle can move in a complicated xy region. This is the fallback. Each state stores a list of successors corresponding to the state index if the shuttle moves up, down, left, right respectively.
• states: List of all the places the shuttle can move to. Each state has {dx, dy, pushedBy}. dx/dy specify how the shuttle has moved from the base state. pushedBy is a list of regions which push the shuttle in this state.
• initial: The ID of the starting state (where the shuttle is in the initial grid)
• fill: Maps x,y to a state list. Each list value is truthy if that cell is impassable in the state corresponding to the list index.
• adjacentTo: Maps x,y to a state list. Each list value specifies the index of a region which connects through this grid cell.
• moves: {x,y} specifying which directions the shuttle can move. Eg, {x:true, y:false}.
• pushedBy: List of {rid, mx, my} for each region which pushes the shuttle consistently in all shuttle states.

Regions

The space is flood filled from the edges of each cell to find regions. Each region is a set of edges which always share the same pressure value. Regions cannot touch each other directly (then they should be joined!).

Regions have a list of connections to other regions. The connections list other regions which this region will be joined to if some particular shuttle is in one of a set of states. Connections are bidirectional - each connection from A to B has a corresponding connection from B to A. (And the connection will appear in both A.connections and B.connections).

Each region in the AST has the following properties:

• engines: List of engine IDs of engines which the region touches
• connections: Set of connections. The values are {rid:otherRegionId, sid:shuttleId, inStates:[...]}
• pressure: Total pressure of all connected engines. Mostly used for debugging - we can't dedup engines with this.

Engines

Each engine in the grid is listed in the AST. For simulation, engines have the interesting property that they can only be counted once for each connected space, regardless of how many faces of the engine are used. If two connected regions both touch different faces of an engine, the pressure only changes by

1. However, if the regions aren't connected, they can both use the engine.

Each engine in the engine list contains {x, y, pressure:-1 or 1, regions:[list of region ids], exclusive:true if the engine only touches one region}

Utility methods

The compiler comes with a bunch of utility methods for printing ascii art grids and updating grids based on shuttle states. There's going to be churn in these methods - but they're exposed for convenience via require('boilerplate-compiler').util.