Re: PDL-P: Re: Hooks for array notation (was Re: Ramblings on "baseclass" for SV etc.)

[Dan Sugalski]

At 07:57 AM 8/11/00 +1000, Jeremy Howard wrote:
>Dan Sugalski wrote:
> > Strong typing and sparse arrays are orthogonal--no reason we shouldn't use
> > them if someone does:
> >
> >    $foo[time]
> >
> > or something of the sort. (People like huge arrays with few scalars in
> > them too... :)
> >
>Good point. It also occurs to me that we would want some syntax to say
>"Don't make this sparse". That way, arrays that are, for example, read from
>a file, could be stored contiguously and can be accessed without traversing
>extra pointers.

Yup. Presumably either the programmer would hint at the type of array, the 
optimizer would notice, or the runtime functions would dynamically figure 
out what to do when an array got funky. And we can always just try one, and 
replace it with something better later if it turns out to be sub-optimal.

                                        Dan

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