Tips for NestedCall, FibonacciElement, & StaticsTest

[Bozar]

I finished Chapter 8 a few days ago. It took me two days to past the last three function calling tests:NestedCall, FibonacciElement, and StaticsTest and I almost gave up during the process. My git repo is available here and I'd like to share some general tips about these projects. Part of them come from this sub-forum and I own great thanks to all the contributors.

The hardest part is to figure what is wrong with your own code. Here are three solutions. First, review your translating code. Does it work exactly as the book required? Second, browse the assembly code. I noticed a label without a function name and this solved a bug I will mention below. The last way is setting breakpoints. You can do this either manually in assembly code or add snippets into translating code. More on this soon.

For the NestedCall test, make sure you handle the `return` VM command, especially the `RET = *(FRAME-5)` part correctly. This is where I have made a mistake. Set breakpoints in your code, perhaps at the end of `return` and `call` for testing. This might help you to zoom into potential bugs. Refer to the following link for more information.

http://nand2tetris-questions-and-answers-forum.32033.n3.nabble.com/Function-command-implementation-td4031726.html

For the FibonacciElement test, I am not sure my mistake is common enough. In `vmCodeWriter.py`, I insert a function name when processing C_LABEL, C_GOTO and C_IF commands. I also reset the function name to an empty string when translating C_RETURN commands. DO NOT reset the string. Because when there are two or more `return`s in one function, resetting the function name when the first `return` is encountered will cause an error.

    function MyFunc 0
        if ...  // MyFunc$IF
        return  // Set {functionName} to an empty string.
        if ...  // $IF
        return

For the StaticsTest test, remember that you need to give static data in each vm file a unique name. The following link contains more hints.

http://nand2tetris-questions-and-answers-forum.32033.n3.nabble.com/One-failed-comparison-with-FibonacciElement-and-StaticsTest-td4031823.html

One more advice. Be careful when using temporary registers: R13, R14 and R15. If two scripts use these registers in a nested way, that is, `out.py` uses `R13` and `in.py` uses `R13` and `R14`, this might raise annoying bugs.

Good luck. Happy coding. :)

[WBahn]

The key with R13, R14, and R15 is to treat them as strictly local, but volatile, registers. Any code that uses one of them must be finished with them before any other code is called. You should be safe as long as you assume that ANY function you call will change all three of these registers to unpredictable values.

[T KARTHIKEYAN]

Thanks a lot!!!