Use `repr` instead of `json.dumps`

[n-gao]

Reference issue

This is a follow-up PR to #51.

51 uses json.dumps which works reasonably fine in most scenarios and avoids a long range of single quotes in the outputted commands. However, JSON and Python code is not a 1:1 matching, e.g., boolean literals start with lower case in JSON (true/false) but with upper case in Python (True/False). This causes any parameter containing a boolean value to be returned as string by eval.

What does this implement/fix?

This PR contains two fixes:

• It replaces json.dumps by repr to have a valid Python representation of the object
• It replaces names.tostring() which got removed in Python 3.9 by names.tobytes() in network.py (this is simply a maintenance update without any functional impact)

Additional information

seml:
  executable: script.py
  name: test
  output_dir: ~/slurm-output
  conda_environment: seml_test
  project_root_dir: .

slurm:
  experiments_per_job: 1
  sbatch_options:
    gres: gpu:0
    mem: 1G
    cpus-per-task: 1
    time: 00-00:01
    partition: cpu
    qos: cpu

fixed:
  wfnet.test: True

import seml
from sacred import Experiment

ex = Experiment()
seml.setup_logger(ex)

@ex.config
def config():
    overwrite = None
    db_collection = None

    if db_collection is not None:
        ex.observers.append(seml.create_mongodb_observer(
            db_collection, overwrite=overwrite))

@ex.automain
def run(
    wfnet: dict,
    seed=None,
):
    return locals()

seml print-command

********** First experiment **********
Executable: script.py
Anaconda environment: seml_test

Arguments for VS Code debugger:
["with", "--debug", "wfnet={'test': True}", "config_hash='69ca8ced44256974e296284455dbabc6'", "db_collection='seml_test'", "--unobserved"]
Arguments for PyCharm debugger:
with --debug 'wfnet={'"'"'test'"'"': True}' 'config_hash='"'"'69ca8ced44256974e296284455dbabc6'"'"'' 'db_collection='"'"'seml_test'"'"'' --unobserved

Command for post-mortem debugging:
python script.py with 'wfnet={'"'"'test'"'"': True}' 'config_hash='"'"'69ca8ced44256974e296284455dbabc6'"'"'' 'db_collection='"'"'seml_test'"'"'' --unobserved --pdb

Command for remote debugging:
python -m debugpy --listen 172.24.64.17:35557 --wait-for-client script.py with 'wfnet={'"'"'test'"'"': True}' 'config_hash='"'"'69ca8ced44256974e296284455dbabc6'"'"'' 'db_collection='"'"'seml_test'"'"'' --unobserved

********** All raw commands **********
python script.py with 'wfnet={'"'"'test'"'"': True}' 'config_hash='"'"'69ca8ced44256974e296284455dbabc6'"'"'' 'db_collection='"'"'seml_test'"'"'' overwrite=19 --force

While the commands are certainly not beautiful they are at least correct.

[n-gao]

Is there any plan on merging this? :)

[gasteigerjo]

Absolutely! Once I find the time to test it... 😅

[n-gao]

This issue is quite severe. It essentially blocks you from using boolean variables or 2d arrays in your yaml files. It would be great if this could be merged or #51 be reversed.

[danielzuegner]

@n-gao does this fix #60? If yes you can close that issue and refer to this.