FlexProp: a complete programming system for P2 (and P1)

ersmith

@AndyProp said:
I see, so the shared is allowing other cogs to read from the array, I noticed you wrote in the "' initialize it" 1 to 2048, should that need to have also "Option base 1" and ubyte my values being 0 to 255

Good catch, definitely you'll want ubyte if the values are 0 to 255. As for the option base, that's of course a matter of taste, but it does make it more like "traditional" basic.

AndyProp

Having a brain dead moment, would anyone care to throw a pan at me and remind me how to MSB first in flexbasic, all I can remember right now is shl but totally lost my mind how to do it.

LSB first, 8 bits banged out of a pin.

sub txbyte(packet as ubyte)
  dim bit as integer
  for bit = 0 to 7
    output(DO) = packet and 1
    packet = packet >> 1
  next bit
end sub

JRoark

AND with binary 1000_0000. If result > 0, output a 1, else output a 0. Shift left one space. Lather, rinse, repeat 7 more times. 👍

AndyProp

@JRoark said:
AND with binary 1000_0000. If result > 0, output a 1, else output a 0. Shift left one space. Lather, rinse, repeat 7 more times. 👍

Cheers

ersmith

Actually shifting off the bottom or top of a full 32 bit word is a little more efficient, so the best bet is to either reverse the byte and shift out LSB, or else shift it up to the top and then test the top bit to determine what to send. Also, there's a special optimization for bit-banging on P2 with pinl() and pinh(), so I'd write it as:

sub txbyte_msb(packet as uinteger)
  dim bit as integer
  packet = packet << 24 ' put in upper byte
  for bit = 0 to 7
    if (packet and $8000_0000) then
      pinh(D0)
    else
      pinl(D0)
    end if
    packet = packet << 1
  next bit
end sub

With all optimizations turned on (-O2) this will generate code like:

_txbyte_msb
    shl arg01, #24
    loc pa, #(@LR__0011-@LR__0009)
    call    #FCACHE_LOAD_
LR__0009
    rep @LR__0012, #8
LR__0010
    shl arg01, #1 wc
    drvc    #56
LR__0011
LR__0012
_txbyte_msb_ret
    ret

which will output at 4 cycles/bit, which is just about optimal I think.

AndyProp

@ersmith said:
Actually shifting off the bottom or top of a full 32 bit word is a little more efficient, there's a special optimization for bit-banging on P2 with pinl() and pinh(), so I'd write it as:

sub txbyte_msb(packet as uinteger)
  dim bit as integer
  packet = packet << 24 ' put in upper byte
  for bit = 0 to 7
    if (packet and $8000_0000) then
      pinh(D0)
    else
      pinl(D0)
    end if
    packet = packet << 1
  next bit
end sub

That brings me to a thought of what is best: to have 2 almost duplicate easier to read subs TX_Byte and TX_Word that are dedicated to word or byte transmission or just one that shifts left according to length in bits of the packet.

First of all it must be determined what the length of the packet in bits and call that something like bit_length.

if the bit_length = 8 then shift left 24

if the bit_length = 16 then shift left 16

The FOR being from 0 to bit_length

Just how to determine the bit_length I don't know right now.

With the addition of a clock pulse sub that contains the right amount of delays, very soon this becomes a nice little function to serial out some data

Finally ending instead of four dedicated subs:
TX_Byte_Msb1st
TX_Word_Msb1st
TX_Byte_Lsb1st
TX_Word_Lsb1st

Could result in

TX_Packet_Msb1st
TX_Packet_Lsb1st

Another thought Eric, what is best in FlexBasic: "Select Case" or "IF Then Else" statements. I always liked using Select Case

ersmith

@AndyProp said:
That brings me to a thought of what is best: to have 2 almost duplicate easier to read subs TX_Byte and TX_Word that are dedicated to word or byte transmission or just one that shifts left according to length in bits of the packet.

Strictly from an efficiency perspective having seperate TX_Byte and TX_Word would be better (the compiler has more opportunities for optimization if it sees constants for the length of bits).

However, you'll have to trade that off against the cost of maintaining two different routines versus one routine.

Just how to determine the bit_length I don't know right now.

Probably the best bet would be to pass it in as a parameter to the subroutine.

Another thought Eric, what is best in FlexBasic: "Select Case" or "IF Then Else" statements. I always liked using Select Case

"Select Case" is better if there are many options. For smaller cases it probably doesn't matter, the two will end up being about the same.

Wuerfel_21

Comment on a recent git commit (not sure if you see it when I comment on the commit?): added warning for labels in other modules

That approach will never work, because BCgetDAToffset (with absolute == false) gets you the offset between a module's PBASE and it's DAT data, which in this case is nonsensical for any module that isn't current. An arguably more correct way would be to get the absolute address into baseExpr and use MEMOP_BASE_POP(see handling of clkfreq/clkmode). That'd work for modules that are already compiled, at least (which should(?) cover the case of a member function accessing a global varaible in C). For full cross-module support, some sort of fixup system would be required...

ersmith

@Wuerfel_21 said:
Comment on a recent git commit (not sure if you see it when I comment on the commit?): added warning for labels in other modules

Thank you Ada -- I hadn't seen your comment. Your suggestion of using MEMOP_BAS_POP seems to work, at least for the common case (member functions accessing data in a parent object) and I've checked that in.

Wuerfel_21

@ersmith said:
Thank you Ada -- I hadn't seen your comment.

I didn't try this time though.

JRoark

@AndyProp You could make that function completely size agnostic if you want. Just pass it the number of bits you want to shift and the source byte/word/long cast as a ulong

sub txbyte_msb(packet as ulong, bitcnt as ulong)
  dim preshift as ulong
  preshift = 32 - bitcnt
  packet = packet << preshift
  for bit = 0 to bitcnt-1
    if (packet and $8000_0000) then
      pinh(D0)
    else
      pinl(D0)
    end if
    packet = packet << 1
  next bit
end sub

Now you can specify odd bit lengths (5, 12, 27, whatever) and the function just works. Write one for the opposite shift direction if you need the LSB-first.

pik33

Optimization problem. A spin program works with -o1, makes strange things with -o2

The symptoms: the robot has a display with an user interface. The user interface displays garbage when compiled with the full optimization and works OK with the standard optimization.

This is the robot controlling program, about 4000 lines of spin2 code, so it is complex to debug. I tried to catch the problem on a simpler code - the video driver+ strange behaving function alone. This worked well with -o2.

This means the bug can be somewhere else in the code and manifests itself in this simple drawing function. What kind of bug can cause this behavior?

whicker

@pik33 said:

This means the bug can be somewhere else in the code and manifests itself in this simple drawing function. What kind of bug can cause this behavior?

One issue that comes to mind is that full optimization can cause sections of timed code to run too fast for peripheral devices. For example setting a data line and then toggling the clock pin in sending data to an lcd. Slow function calls could get changed to inline drvh and drvl instructions. Since most are running the P2 at 200+ MHz this would be a very short pulse most likely violating one of the many hold time specs of the device.

Defensive coding would enforce the minimum delays between such pin transitions, using waits and delay durations that adjust to CPU clock speed.

Of course If there is an optimizer issue, it's not going to be able to be corrected from only listing vague symptoms specific to your application.

Wuerfel_21

Try narrowing it down to the exact optimization flag. I.e. try -O1,loop-reduce, -O1,cse... there's a list of which flags each preset level enables somewhere. There's also an attribute to control optimizer flags per-function, so you can also trx narrowimg it down that way.

Rayman

@Wuerfel_21 told me this one once:
REM -O2,!cse <-- Use this if -O2 doesn't work

ersmith

@pik33 said:
This is the robot controlling program, about 4000 lines of spin2 code, so it is complex to debug. I tried to catch the problem on a simpler code - the video driver+ strange behaving function alone. This worked well with -o2.

This means the bug can be somewhere else in the code and manifests itself in this simple drawing function. What kind of bug can cause this behavior?

Which version of FlexProp are you using? In 5.9.5 I fixed a fairly serious bug which could cause memory corruption, which was hard to track down. There are also a few significant bug fixes in 5.9.6, so it's worth updating to that one if you haven't already.

As @Rayman suggested, using "-O2,!cse" instead of "-O2" is worth a try -- the CSE (common sub-expression elimination) optimization added in -O2 is one of the ones where bugs often occur. There's a list of all of the individual optimizations in the general.md general compiler documentation.

pik33

5.9.6.

Today I will try to find more about it.

I call a function which draws a battery on the screen and then another function which draws the rest of the user interface. Both functions use the graphic primitives from a HDMI driver. In the battery function lines are drawn, but not where I wanted them, garbage, instead of characters, are drawn not where I want them, as if the driver function got wrong parameters - bad x, y and character code and color. Then, all the rest of the user interface drawm in another function is drawn correctly. The same methods from HDMI driver are called from both of them. The battery function works better, but still not 100% good when I removed global variables from it (I searched for differences and the battery function uses global variables in it while the main menu doesn't)

Edit: O2,!cse works, while -O1,cse doesn't. A bug found in HDMI driver (unnecessary variable left from the previous version, it seems -O1 initialized it to 0 while -O2 did not). The variable is now removed and characters are displayed OK, even if full -O2 enabled. The problem "lines not in the proper place" remains. Maybe another bug left to find.

Edit 2. Something is wrong with parameters..

pub outtextxycf(x,y,text,f) | iii

debug(udec(f))
repeat iii from 0 to strsize(text)-1
  putcharxycf(x+8*iii,y,byte[text+iii],f)

Now if

v.outtextxycf(x+19,y+4,v.inttostr(voltage+/1000),15)

there is

Cog0 f = 15

but if

  k:=15
  if voltage<24800
    k:=40

 v.outtextxycf(x+19,y+4,v.inttostr(voltage+/1000),k)

there is

Cog0 f = 4_294_967_096

which is %1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 1111 0011 1000. Its 8bit value is 56 dec and it gives a purple color on the screen (expected with c==56 but f should be 15 or 40 in this case)

-O1... and the debug is good (15 and 40) and colors are good too

ersmith

@pik33 : Sorry, but I cannot reproduce any problem given the fragments you posted. Are you able to share more of your program? I think we'd need at least the function that makes the call to v.outtextxycf. Having the whole program would be even better, if you can share it.

pik33

@ersmith said:
@pik33 : Sorry, but I cannot reproduce any problem given the fragments you posted. Are you able to share more of your program? I think we'd need at least the function that makes the call to v.outtextxycf. Having the whole program would be even better, if you can share it.

All the big, alpha state mess is here: https://github.com/pik33/ultibo-propeller/tree/main/robuv001 - the working file is robuv015a.spin2, EDIT: robuv016a.spin2

As it is work in progress and too big piece of code, I created simpler file - bugcatcher.spin2 - to try individual functions and catch the problem.

As it is now, I suspect this is rather a bug in my code, which appears with full optimization enabled, and doesn't appear with cse switched off - than a bug in the compiler itself. I only try to understand what kind of bug can make the function argument pass incorrectly. I will return to this project in Monday, as it needs a hardware I haven't at home.

There is a function "battery" near line 660, which calls outtextxycf and other graphic functions and passes incorrect values. It is called from processmainmenu(), starting near line 770

Edit 2: That is not parameter passing error. The 'k' local variable became 4_294_967_096 before calling outtextxycf. To be debugged further

This is the parent function:

pub battery() | i,j,k,x,y
x:=131
y:=8

voltage:=(31*voltage+adc.measure())>>5              ' accumulator voltage 


if voltage<>oldv

  if (oldv>24000) && (voltage<24000)

  '' todo - block motors here!!!!
    audio.sawbeep(2*audio.c4,8192,200)
    audio.sawbeep(2*audio.f4,8192,200)
    audio.sawbeep(2*audio.c4,8192,200)
    audio.sawbeep(2*audio.f4,8192,200)
    audio.say(4,16384)
    waitms(3000)
    repeat 100
      voltage:=(31*voltage+adc.measure())>>5   

  j:=(voltage-24000)
  if j<0
    j:=0
  if j>4800
    j:=4800
  j:=j/48

  i:=116
  if voltage<27200
    i:=180
  if voltage<24800
    i:=244
  if voltage<24200
    i:=36

  k:=15
  if voltage<24800
    k:=40


  v.waitvbl(1)

  v.frame(x,y,x+102,y+22,15)
  v.frame(x+102,y+4,x+106,y+18,15)
  v.box(x+1,y+1,x+101,y+21,0)  
  v.box(x+1,y+1,x+1+j,y+21,i)  

  v.outtextxycf(x+19,y+4,v.inttostr(voltage+/1000),15)
  debug(udec(k))
  v.outtextxycf(x+35,y+4,string("."),k)  
  v.outtextxycf(x+43,y+4,v.inttostr2(voltage+//1000,3),k)
  v.outtextxycf(x+75,y+4,string("V"),k)
  oldv:=voltage

Now

Cog0  k = 4_294_967_096

Edit 3.

k is good after it is set, it goes bad after first call to v.frame. I tried to call v.line which also destroys k.

Edit 4. .lst attached.

pik33

Another lack of my understanding of how the Spin compiler works... I tried to make an array of 17 strings... so

long mapnames[17]

then

repeat i from 0 to 16
  mapnames[i]:=string("                ")

What I wanted: initialize the array to 17 strings of 16 spaces each
What I got: all 17 pointers are the same. The compiler simply thought - "I already have the string defined so I will not waste the memory for 16 more identical strings."

A workaround: initialize every string with different text in it

A "legal" solution: I don't know.

__deets__

But that’s how string() is defined. It will just create a static string that can be pointed to. Imagine you printing a string a 1000 times in a loop. Do you want 1000 allocations for that, gobbling up memory?

I’m not aware of dynamic memory allocation in spin. It is available in C. And comes with its 🥫 of 🪱!

However if I wanted to do such a thing, I’d declare a byte array of 17*16, and then just take the address of that in the first pointer, and then do the pointer arithmetic for the following 16.

repeat i from 0 to 16
  mapnames[i]:=@buffer + i * 16

ersmith

The best way to initialize an array in Spin is probably to use the DAT section, and then to use something like @deets 's solution to fill the array with pointers, something like:

DAT
 rawdata
    $20[16], 0 ' string 1, 16 spaces then a 0
    $20[16], 0 ' string 2, 16 spaces then a 0
    $20[16]. 0 ' string 3, 16 spaces then a 0
   ' repeat as many times as necessary
...
repeat i from 0 to 16
    mapnames[i] := @rawdata + i * 17

pik33

Spin is simply not Pascal, not C, and not even Basic. This causes this type of problems for someone who programmed in these languages and unconsciously expects something else, than it really does. I use a lot of strings that are PITA in Spin, I need arrays of strings and multidimensional arrays of integers, and maybe my optimization problems are also result of something like this string problem, which I can't see yet.

No more big program in Spin. The robot control program was the last one. I (probably) will not rewrite this, it is too big and in the last pre-beta stage, but for my next P2 projects there is Basic and C available.

iseries

Trying to compile this code from littlefs but running into a compiler issue.

Here is a recreation of the offending code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <propeller.h>
#include <stdbool.h>

enum lfs_type {
    // file types
    LFS_TYPE_REG            = 0x001,
    LFS_TYPE_DIR            = 0x002,

    // internally used types
    LFS_TYPE_SPLICE         = 0x400,
    LFS_TYPE_NAME           = 0x000,
    LFS_TYPE_STRUCT         = 0x200,
    LFS_TYPE_USERATTR       = 0x300,
    LFS_TYPE_FROM           = 0x100,
    LFS_TYPE_TAIL           = 0x600,
    LFS_TYPE_GLOBALS        = 0x700,
    LFS_TYPE_CRC            = 0x500,

    // internally used type specializations
    LFS_TYPE_CREATE         = 0x401,
    LFS_TYPE_DELETE         = 0x4ff,
    LFS_TYPE_SUPERBLOCK     = 0x0ff,
    LFS_TYPE_DIRSTRUCT      = 0x200,
    LFS_TYPE_CTZSTRUCT      = 0x202,
    LFS_TYPE_INLINESTRUCT   = 0x201,
    LFS_TYPE_SOFTTAIL       = 0x600,
    LFS_TYPE_HARDTAIL       = 0x601,
    LFS_TYPE_MOVESTATE      = 0x7ff,

    // internal chip sources
    LFS_FROM_NOOP           = 0x000,
    LFS_FROM_MOVE           = 0x101,
    LFS_FROM_USERATTRS      = 0x102,
};

typedef uint32_t lfs_tag_t;

typedef struct lfs {
    int dummy;
} lfs_t;

struct lfs_mattr {
    lfs_tag_t tag;
    const void *buffer;
};

typedef struct lfs_mdir {
    uint32_t rev;
    uint32_t tail[2];
    bool split;
} lfs_mdir_t;

#define LFS_MKTAG(type, id, size) \
    (((lfs_tag_t)(type) << 20) | ((lfs_tag_t)(id) << 10) | (lfs_tag_t)(size))

#define LFS_MKATTRS(...) \
    (struct lfs_mattr[]){__VA_ARGS__}, \
    sizeof((struct lfs_mattr[]){__VA_ARGS__}) / sizeof(struct lfs_mattr)

int err;
lfs_mdir_t *dir;
lfs_mdir_t *tail;
lfs_t *lfs;

static int lfs_dir_commit(lfs_t *lfs, lfs_mdir_t *dir, const struct lfs_mattr *attrs, int attrcount)
{
    return 0;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{

    err = lfs_dir_commit(lfs, dir, LFS_MKATTRS(
            {LFS_MKTAG(LFS_TYPE_TAIL + tail->split, 0x3ff, 8), tail->tail}));

    while (1)
    {
        _waitms(1000);
    }
}

These are the errors:

TestDef.c:82: error: incompatible types in assignment: expected _struct__lfs_mattr but got multiple values
TestDef.c:82: error: incompatible types in assignment: expected _struct__lfs_mattr but got multiple values
TestDef.c:82: error: incompatible types in parameter passing: expected pointer to const _struct__lfs_mattr but got _struct__lfs_mattr

Mike

RS_Jim

Unexpected Send
I have been working in flexprop a lot recently. I have some files that don't compile as the invisable last line seems to contain this error. add a dat section at the end of the file and the error moves down to the new end. I can block copy code sections out of the file into a new one and it will compile fine. how do I locate this mystery bug and squash it for good?
jim

Circuitsoft

Sounds like the files should be looked at in a hex editor. I'd be curious about the last byte or two of the file.

ersmith

@iseries : Unfortunately FlexC's parsing of data types is incomplete, and you've run into one of the unsupported cases. I'll try to fix that in the next release. I don't think there's any easy work-around.

@RS_Jim : Are you able to share any of the files that don't compile? If we could look at it then we might be able to figure out what's wrong. If you can't share, then look carefully at all the lines containing the word "send" and see if any of them are suspicious. It could be that there's some kind of error earlier in the file that doesn't get reported until the end. Note that in Spin2 the words "send" and "recv" are reserved, which is not the case in Spin1.

__deets__

@RS_Jim said:
I have been working in flexprop a lot recently. I have some files that don't compile as the invisable last line seems to contain this error. add a dat section at the end of the file and the error moves down to the new end. I can block copy code sections out of the file into a new one and it will compile fine. how do I locate this mystery bug and squash it for good?

Looks like it could be unexpected non-breaking spaces for example, from copy & pasting from a browser for example. Maybe this helps: https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~markm/ascii.html

RS_Jim

@ersmith,
Eric, here is a zip of one of the files that fails to compile with the mystery "send" command. My environment is flexprop 5.9.2 on a HP G6 laptop running Lenux Mint 20. Thanks for taking a look at this.
Jim

ersmith

I can't compile your file, because it depends on a whole bunch of libraries that I don't have. However, there is a suspicious { on line 154 which does not seem to ever be closed. flexspin 5.9.6 complains about this (WARNING: EOF seen inside comment). This then produces an error which says "error: syntax error, unexpected $end" which means unexpected end of file, not unexpected send.