Moritz (>), Carl (>>):
>> But on another level, the level of types, Perl 6 makes it fairly
>> *un*natural that the type C<Foo> refers to the type C<Bar>, which in
>> turn refers to the type C<Foo>.
>
> True, and that has also been bothering me quite a bit.
>
> The "solution" is to always write ::Typename instead of Typename....
> except when it isn't a solution.
>
> First of all in signatures ::T means actually "type capture", secondly I
> guess that some constructs really want to resolve type names at compile
> time -- for example the multi dispatcher needs to know the inheritance
> structure of a type in order to its pre-sorting of signatures.
>
> The first problem could be solved by introducing another syntax for type
> captures (perhaps :>foo or so?), of the second I know too little to
> really comment on it.
I had half an idea about the second one as I wrote the first mail. It
may or may not be useful, but here goes:
Some keyword, on the level of 'is' and 'does', which allows one to use
a not-yet-defined typename within another type. It wouldn't solve the
core problem -- the one about having to think about circularities --
but it would allow one to create cycles. So this would work:
class A precedes-but-refers-to B { ... B ... }
class B { ... A ... }
Just an idea.
// Carl
