At 02:34 PM 10/24/00 +0100, David Mitchell wrote:
>Ken Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > David Mitchell wrote:
> > > Now of course if we have the luxury of deciding that core perl 'knows'
> > > about complex numbers, then of the parser can be made to recognise ...
> >
> > The core doesn't need to know -- that was my point. All the core needs
> > is the basic constant folding rules _it_already_has_ combined with a
> > macro to define "i". When you "use complex" the macro would be folded
> > into the parser. The core doesn't need any special support (other than
> > decent macros... ;)
>
>Not being au fait with all RFCs atc, are there any concrete proposal
>for macros like this, ir is this just a hazy suggestion?
Probably just a hazy suggestion, though if complex numbers are part of the
perl core, it'll know how to handle this particular case. (The "2i" thing)
> > > In summary: Perl shouldn't do interpetation of numeric literals, but
> > > should instead delegate it to the numeric class currently in scope.
> >
> > I agree with you. The complication is that there isn't *a* numeric class
> > in scope -- there are *many* numeric classes.
>
>Well, I was assuming that there would be *a* numeric class in scope
>- as defined be the innermost lexical 'use foo'.
>I assumed that Perl wouldn't be clever enough to know about all available
>numberic types and automatically chose the best representation; rather
>that it was the programmer's responsibilty via 'use' or some other syntax.
Numeric constants will probably fall into two classes--those perl's parser
knows about and can convert to, and those it doesn't and just treats as
strings.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
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