hexatridecimal

[texastoland]

Porting the JS equivalent of:

var uid = n.toString(36)

Currently what's required is either unsafeCoerce 36 or:

let hexatridecimal = maybe hexadecimal (radix 36)
let uid = toStringAs hexatridecimal n

I don't think the trouble is lacking Radix 36 as much as radix returns Maybe instead of clamping.

[paf31]

Sorry, could you give more details? What's the problem you'd like to solve here?

[texastoland]

Updated the description.

[paf31]

Ah, I see, thanks.

[paf31]

I think we could reasonably add an unsafeRadix function as well as a base36 :: Radix value.

[garyb]

I think Maybe is always preferrable to clamping because it makes you think about how you want to handle the exceptional circumstance - maybe you do want it to fail rather than clamping, or maybe you want it to choose some other arbitrary radix. Clamping makes the failure silent and therefore something you have to go and look up if things aren't behaving as you expected later.

So 👍 for adding a base36 radix value. 😄

[texastoland]

So 👍 for adding a base36 radix value. 😄

Do you prefer that over hexatridecimal? I only suggested it for consistency.

Also I'm using toStringAs with Number. Right now I'm just using unsafeCoerce. Would it be worth PRing somewhere as well?

[sharkdp]

So for adding a base36 radix value.

Do you prefer that over hexatridecimal? I only suggested it for consistency.

I prefer base36. I think its easier to parse (by a human).

Also I'm using toStringAs with Number. Right now I'm just using unsafeCoerce. Would it be worth PRing somewhere as well?

@hdgarrood also suggested to implement a Number version in #17. I never wanted to use floating point values in a non-decimal system so I finally decided to just implement this for Int here.

If you only want to convert an integer Number to an Int, I'd go with round or floor instead of unsafeCoerce.

[garyb]

Yeah, I prefer "base36" too as "hexatridecimal" is not a common name like the others. I misread it as just "hexadecimal" at first too 😉

[texastoland]

If you only want to convert an integer Number to an Int, I'd go with round or floor instead of unsafeCoerce.

Originally I was using it with integers too big too be represented by Int. I switched to a simplified version that just takes the suffix from a floating point. unsafeCoerce is the only solution in either case outside of new FFI:

mkUID = do
  randomOrZero <- random
  randomOffset <- random
  let probablyNotZero = randomOrZero + randomOffset
  let uid = toStringAs (base36) (unsafeCoerce probablyNotZero)
  pure (drop 2 uid)