On Fri, Apr 23, 2004 at 08:42:28AM -0400, Dan Sugalski wrote: : At 11:29 PM +0100 4/22/04, Simon Cozens wrote: : >[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Dan Sugalski) writes: : >> my Joe $foo; : >> : >> emits the code that, at runtime, finds the class ID of whatever Joe's : >> in scope, instantiates a new object of that class : > : >Uh, is that right? I don't think that "my" is a constructor, more a typing : >declarator. : : Since any type potentially has assignment behaviour, it has to be a : constructor. For example, if you've got the Joe class set such that : assigning to it prints the contents to stderr, this: : : my Joe $foo; : $foo = 12; : : should print 12 to stderr. Can't do that if you've not put at least a : minimally constructed thing in the slot.
Yes. More typically, the type of the value needs to be checked at assignment time, if we can't intuit its safety at compile time. >From an abstract point of view the constructor in question isn't so much constructing a Joe object as a container for a Joe object--though, of course, optimizations happen. So in the Parrot engine the containers and containees are a bit more incestuous than it would appear from the abstract language level. That's okay. Larry
