Unclear instructions for Elixir Log Level exercise

Exercism Exercism Chat
1

Hello all, I just started going through the Elixir track the other day and I’m confused by the directions given for the “Log Level” exercise.
For the first part the instruction says:

Implement the LogLevel.to_label/2 function. It should take an integer code and a boolean flag telling you if the log comes from a legacy app, and return the label of a log line as an atom. Unknown log codes and codes unsupported in a legacy app should return an unknown label.

In the example outputs are like this:

LogLevel.to_label(0, false)

=> :trace

LogLevel.to_label(0, true)

=> :unknown

This confuses me because for both examples the log code is a 0, which is a known log code, but the first example passes false for the second argument and apparently the expected return value is :trace . But the instructions clearly say that Unknown log codes and codes unsupported in a legacy app should return an unknown label. So which is it that is wanted? The code 0, while a known code, is NOT supported in legacy apps, so shouldn’t that return :unknown according to the instructions??
I’m very confused here…

1 Like
2

Did you see the table of known log codes and which ones are supported in a legacy app? It’s right there before the description of the first task.

3

Hi, thanks for the reply. Yes, I did see the table and I actually did finish the exercise, but I still felt (and still do feel) the instructions were unclear.

I would happily offer to to rewrite the instructions to be clearer, but from what I understand, Exercism has paused community contributions (And with completely reasonable and acceptable reasons). Do you happen to know if anything has changed regarding that?

4

Elixir is still accepting community contributions. But if you saw the table, then I actually don’t understand what is unclear about the current instructions.

So which is it that is wanted? The code 0, while a known code, is NOT supported in legacy apps, so shouldn’t that return :unknown according to the instructions??

The code 0 is known in modern apps, but unknown in legacy apps. The second argument of the to_label function tells you if the code came from a legacy app. Hence 0’s label differs based on that argument.

5

If you propose a concrete diff here, it’ll gladly be discussed. If the response is good, a PR is welcome.

```diff
  diff syntax
- diff syntax
+ diff syntax
```

  diff syntax
- diff syntax
+ diff syntax
6

Thank you both! I’ll definitely consider posting a new thread with a diff… :blush: