adding multiple list items from a macro

[Keith Hall]

Hi,

I'd really like some help, probably I'm missing something obvious, but hopefully any advice you give here could also help others as clueless as me - apologies in advance if any of my terminology is woefully incorrect :)

I have created a simple macro that returns a list of rules, let's call it Packages/User/macros/multi.py:

from YAMLMacros.lib.syntax import meta, expect, pop_on, stack, rule

def multiple_items(prefix, count):
    return [rule(match = prefix + str(index)) for index in range(0, count)]

I want to be able to append the rules created from this macro into an existing list of rules. To be concrete, let's say I want to extend the XML syntax definition, in particular to add some rules at the top of the tag-stuff context:

%YAML 1.2
%TAG ! tag:yaml-macros:YAMLMacros.lib.extend,YAMLMacros.lib.include,User.macros.multi:
---
!apply
- !include_resource XML.sublime-syntax
- !merge
  name: New Name
  scope: text.xml.example

  contexts: !merge
    tag-stuff: !prepend
      - match: 'example1'
      - match: 'example2'
      - !multiple_items [test, 3]

Currently, building this produces:

# ...
  tag-stuff:
    - match: example1
    - match: example2
    -   - match: test0
        - match: test1
        - match: test2
# existing tag-stuff items...

but I want it to produce:

# ...
  tag-stuff:
    - match: example1
    - match: example2
    - match: test0
    - match: test1
    - match: test2
# existing tag-stuff items...

what do I need to do to achieve that? I thought maybe all would help to flatten it, so I tried:

%YAML 1.2
%TAG ! tag:yaml-macros:YAMLMacros.lib.extend,YAMLMacros.lib.include,User.macros.multi:
---
!apply
- !include_resource XML.sublime-syntax
- !merge
  name: New Name
  scope: text.xml.example

  contexts: !merge
    tag-stuff: !prepend
      - !all
        - - match: 'example1'
          - match: 'example2'
        - !multiple_items [test, 3]

but it gives a traceback in the ST console (i.e. it isn't caught and displayed in the build system output):

ruamel.yaml.representer.RepresenterError: cannot represent an object: <YAMLMacros.lib.extend.All object at 0x000000000521FFD0>

clearly I'm clueless as to what I'm doing - I've tried it in various different ways, and with !merge and others in case it would help, but no joy...

[Thomas Smith]

The easy way to do this is with include:

    tag-stuff: !prepend
      - match: 'example1'
      - match: 'example2'
      - include: other-stuff

    other-stuff: !multiple_items [test, 3]

The extend library also exports a flatten macro. However, because the contents of tag-stuff already have a !prepend tag, it would be a bit awkward to apply both macros:

    tag-stuff: !prepend
      - !flatten
        - match: 'example1'
        - match: 'example2'
        - !multiple_items [test, 3]

Ideally, it would be nice if include would accept an anonymous context as an alternative to a context name. Then, we could do this:

    tag-stuff: !prepend
      - match: 'example1'
      - match: 'example2'
      - include: !multiple_items [test, 3]

This would require support on Sublime's part.

EDIT: Fixed the third example.

[Keith Hall]

Using flatten and prepend together doesn't seem to work as expected - I just end up with - match: example1 prepended, and not example2 or test0 etc.

But your idea of using include is brilliant and works perfectly, thanks!