The when nimvm statement fails to compile when in a file called nimvm.nim

[eanyanwu]

Description

I am familiarizing myself with the language by going through the manual.
I am creating seperate nim files to test some of the stuff in the manual.

This snippet from the manual fails to compile when it is in a file called nimvm.nim

# in a file called nimvm.nim
proc someProcThatMayRunInCompileTime(): bool =
  when nimvm:
    result = true
  else:
    result = false

The following errors is printed at the terminal when run with nim c -r nimvm.nim:

/home/eze/crafts/learnnim/nimvm.nim(2, 8) Error: expression 'nimvm' has no type (or is ambiguous)

It could very well be that this is "expected" because of something I have not yet hit in the manual. I thought I would flag it anyways.

Nim Version

Nim Compiler Version 2.0.4 [Linux: amd64]
Compiled at 2024-03-28
Copyright (c) 2006-2023 by Andreas Rumpf

git hash: b47747d
active boot switches: -d:release

Current Output

Hint: used config file '/home/eze/.choosenim/toolchains/nim-2.0.4/config/nim.cfg' [Conf]
Hint: used config file '/home/eze/.choosenim/toolchains/nim-2.0.4/config/config.nims' [Conf]
......................................................................
/home/eze/crafts/learnnim/nimvm.nim(2, 8) Error: expression 'nimvm' has no type (or is ambiguous)

Expected Output

Nothing

Possible Solution

I'm a newbie so I'm afraid I don't have any idea :)

Additional Information

Thank you for your work!

[eanyanwu]

Ah ... i think this is because a file is a module and the module's name can be accessed from within itself? This could probably be closed. I could have asked this in the forum. I suspect this is normal behavior.

[eanyanwu]

Re-opening because I got through the manual and still do not understand why this doesn't work... So i think it might be a bug

[metagn]

Another module symbol bug, coincidentally might work in devel now with #23597

[metagn]

Quirk of when, it directly calls lookUp to check if nimvm is system.nimvm. We could either hardcode the identifier "nimvm" to invoke when nimvm (and working around it with when (nimvm):) or allow something like when system.nimvm which currently doesn't compile.