>>I'd like to see every number bundled with a "precision" attribute.
>That's not what I call a high-level language feature. People don't
>want to think about that, nor about machine-level precision issues.
>See REXX.
>In fact, I'd rather to see a painless and transparent int->float->bignum
>autoconversion happen, the way currently we (theoretically) see the
>int->float one occur.
In some of the OO stuff people (me included) wanted to see simple scalars be
able to act "like" objects. Others have talked about allowing for strong
typing. I was wondering about maybe being able to store these attributes as
optional parts of the scalar. Something like this (please don't get hung up
on the details, I am not much of a designer):
my($amt,$hours,$total);
$amt->{TYPE} = "DOLLARS";
$total->{TYPE} = "DOLLARS";
$hours->{TYPE} = "INTEGER";
$total->{PICTURE} = "$zzz,zz0.00"; # seen any COBOL in Perl, can't
remember the Perl equiv?
#
$total = $amt * $hours;
# for strict type checking
$total->{ASREAL} = $amt->{ASREAL} * $hours->{ASREAL};
does the concept make any sense (God help the example)? The idea being that
when strong type checking is turned on the first multiplication example
would flag a warning.
