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

[Karl Glazebrook]

Dan Sugalski wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 
> I dunno. If someone tells perl an array's sparse, I'd tend to believe they
> knew what they were doing. Wouldn't hurt to have some sort of debugging
> analysis messages that's notice you declared an array sparse but it really
> wasn't, but...


It sounds like we are after something like

my compact sparse @a;

If we are going to have @a * @b are we also going to be able to do
return (@a, @b) and not have them splattered into one list?

i.e. implicit references everywhere

Karl