__nobody comments on The 2021 Less Wrong Darwin Game

[__nobody]

Do you have a more exact version spec? Because I don’t even have pip3 and I don’t use Python, so I just installed the hy that comes with my distro… and then I get

  File "./main.hy", line 63, column 1

  (defn initial-population [biome]
    "Creates a list of initial organisms"
    (+ [] #*
       (lfor species +species-list+
             (if (= (. species ["spawning-zone"])
                    biome)
               (do
                 (setv organisms [])
                 (setv energy +seed-population-energy+)
                 (while (> energy 0)
                   (.append organisms (.copy species))
                   (-= energy (energy-of species)))
                 organisms)
               []))))
HyTypeError: b"`*' is not a defined reader macro."

and I don’t even have a clue what the b"``*' part is supposed to mean...

---

I experimented some more, no clue what package I’d have to install to get pip - neither pip nor pip3 exist. On the systems that I have, I get matplotlib 3.0.2-2 with hy 0.12.1-2.

[Zack_M_Davis]

no clue what package I’d have to install to get pip - neither pip nor pip3 exist

On Ubuntu, at least, there’s a python3-pip package, separately from the python3 package? (Other distros may be similar.) It’s also supposed to be possible to install pip using Python itself.

[lsusr]

Here is a workaround.

1. cd into the project directory

2. Run the python3 interpreter

3. In the python3 interpretor, call import hy

4. In the python3 interpretor, call import main

[__nobody]

That just gets me an even longer error message:

Python 3.7.3 (default, Jan 22 2021, 20:04:44)
[GCC 8.3.0] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import hy
>>> import main
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/hy/macros.py", line 238, in reader_macroexpand
    reader_macro = _hy_reader[None][char]
KeyError: '*'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 983, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 967, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 668, in _load_unlocked
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 638, in _load_backward_compatible
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/hy/importer.py", line 197, in load_module
    self.path)
[...(*snip*)...]
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/hy/compiler.py", line 424, in compile_atom
    ret = _compile_table[atom_type](self, atom)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/hy/compiler.py", line 365, in checker
    return fn(self, expression)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/hy/compiler.py", line 2559, in compile_dispatch_reader_macro
    expr = reader_macroexpand(str_char, expression.pop(0), self)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/hy/macros.py", line 242, in reader_macroexpand
    "`{0}' is not a defined reader macro.".format(char)
hy.errors.HyTypeError:   File "/home/nobody/projects/darwin/main.hy", line 63, column 1
[and then as before]

Guess I’ll try setting things up on another system tomorrow, or else I’ll skip.

[lsusr]

The import main workaround did solve the error for someone else. In case it helps, I’m using Python 3.8.10 with the following two libraries installed via pip3.

hy==0.20.0
matplotlib=3.4.2

[__nobody]

Thanks!

Turns out it needs a newer hy, then it works. (And in case anyone else has a similar problem and is also a Python noob, pip’s package is probably called python3-pip or something like that. After that, the rest is explained either in the article or by pip itself.)