At 10:23 AM 9/1/00 -0700, Larry Wall wrote:
>Dan Sugalski writes:
>: Type returns a magic cookie value of some sort (Not sure what sort yet),
>: name returns a string with the name of the type of the variable.
>
>Why can't the type object just stringify to the name of the type?
I'd figured that the type would be an integer, rather than an object, and
one that wouldn't necessarily map to just one 'real' variable type. A tied
integer, for example, would return an integer type though the name would
likely be the package the variable was tied into.
> From a language level, I'm inclined to say that any bare identifier
>that is known to be a type name should be compiled to a type object
>that stringifies to the name of its type. Then class methods don't
>have to do an extra symbol table lookup.
None of this should really be visible from a language level except
indirectly. (Through the overload mechanism, perhaps)
The name function for most variables would likely just return a constant
string and, while there's some speed hit from that instead of just storing
it in the variable somewhere, it's not likely to be called often enough to
make a difference.
For real perl language-level method calls, I'd figure we'd cache a pointer
to the package stash in the variable, store the hash value of the method
name (if it's a bareword method call) in the opcode and, if the call's on a
typed variable, a pointer to the CV for the method. (Ignored if the real
variable's not of the type declared in the code)
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
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teddy bears get drunk
