Re: Please rename 'but' to 'has'.

2002-04-21 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Everyone I've ever talked to about it agrees that defining things to be a negative is just a bad idea. Consider: if (gronk) do_this(); else do_that(); versus if (not_gronk) do_that(); else do_this(); It is one of the standard refactoring tricks to replace the second one with the first. The

Please rename 'but' to 'has'.

2002-04-20 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Larry, Please don't use 'but' to associate runtime properties to things. Please call it 'has'. First, but is just strange. I have a thing and I want to tell you it is red, so I say 'but'. Huh? Using 'has' makes a nice parallel with 'is' for compile time properties: What you are is

Re: Social Reform

2001-06-12 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Excuse me, my mistake. David Grove wrote: If you have not been following this thread, then maybe that is the reason for the confused-sounding nature of your email. I would say Simon was the one ignoring an issue and attacking a person, not Vijay. I think Vijay was the one

Re: Multi-dimensional arrays and relational db data

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Sam Tregar wrote: Perl 6 will allow you to mutate your syntax at runtime any way you want. At *runtime*? You won't need computed gotos or eval anymore. You just have one block of generic-looking code and you change what the syntax means before it executes. Three routines in one! Daniel

Re: Multi-dimensional arrays and relational db data

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Me wrote: I don't think it's reasonable to say I propose you change something that hasn't yet been defined. Rather, it is precisely because you haven't yet defined the MD array syntax that I thought it worth at least considering how it parallels db data BEFORE you define it. Considering

Re: Multi-dimensional arrays and relational db data

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Simon Cozens wrote: scream This is the kind of thing that can be dealt with perfectly satisfactorily with external modules; ergo, it does NOT need to be in the core. Ergo, it probably *does* *not* *need* *discussing* *here*. Much of the discussion on this list seems to concern what will be

Re: suggested properties of operator results

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Dave Storrs wrote: 2) This feature would be very prone to abuse (makes it easier to obfuscate code), Whoa! Never thought I'd hear that! And computed function calls/adding things to the namespace at runtime/rearranging the inheritance tree at runtime aren't very prone to abuse !?

Re: Multi-dimensional arrays and relational db data

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Dan Sugalski wrote: At 04:20 PM 6/11/2001 +0100, Simon Cozens wrote: On Mon, Jun 11, 2001 at 08:16:12AM -0700, Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: At *runtime*? You won't need computed gotos or eval anymore. You just have one block of generic-looking code and you change what the syntax means

Re: Social Reform

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
If you have not been following this thread, then maybe that is the reason for the confused-sounding nature of your email. I would say Simon was the one ignoring an issue and attacking a person, not Vijay. I think Vijay was the one pointing out that this person (Me) was contributing to the

Re: Embrace polymorphic builtins, for they are cool.

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
So, you want method overloading, I take it? It is a very nice feature and I've used it often in another language. Well, you basically can't have it unless you have type checking of the arguments. And the more strong the type checking, the less dangerous and the more effective the method

Re: Multi-dimensional arrays and relational db data

2001-06-11 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
I think you could only delay function calls automatically like this if you could ensure that they are truely functional. That is, their output must depend only on the arugments given and must have no mutation side-effects. It seems to me that this is hard to guarantee in Perl, even for the

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-07 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
This is similar to the solution they use in Java. You have an interface, which is compile time checked. Then, when you load a class at runtime, you check at load time that it satisfies the interface. You either get an exception right then, or you're fine. Daniel Michael G Schwern wrote:

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
I would like to suggest that this is one of the major advantages that Java has over Perl. Getting things to work quickly in Perl is great. I like that very much about Perl. But in the end, I'm most concerned that my code is correct. Having the compiler check everything it can possibly check

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
I can't imagine any way in which one can consider Perl typing to be strong. When you know the type of a variable, you are supposed to have confidence that when you see a statement a - lexically locally (without looking around elsewhere) and b - at compile time you know exactly what the statement

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Michael G Schwern wrote: On Tue, Jun 05, 2001 at 08:24:31AM -0700, Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: But in the end, I'm most concerned that my code is correct. Having the compiler check everything it can possibly check for me is really a requirement for that. Compile time type checking

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
I would like to see some sort of use really_strict pragma which would disable at compile time the kinds of things you mentioned: Yes, the point is to make this possible, not required. I thought Perl was supposed to make hard things possible. This is easy in Java and its not even possible in

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
, but I consider looking at the code and 1 - knowing what other code it is going to call, or 2 - whether that class really has that member or not, etc. at compile time to be a minimum reqirement of any typing I would call strong. Daniel John Porter wrote: Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: I can't imagine

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
-0700, Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: Someone please tell me what automatic method generation is exactly. Its the generation of large numbers of similar methods which would otherwise be really tedious to write out by hand, such as accessor methods. Without this, object-oriented programming would

Re: Properties and stricture

2001-06-05 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
John Porter wrote: Daniel S. Wilkerson wrote: It is doubtful we shall have compilers that can tell you for example, that you used the wrong algorithm. Right. I think that's what Schwern was getting at, when he said Type checking is nice, but its just one class of error-checking

Re: Exegesis2 and the is keyword

2001-05-18 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Please forgive the naiveté of this question. 1 - If Perl6 is going to have multiple back-ends, rather like the cross-compilation feature of gcc, Perl6 won't be a specific virtual machine or back-end. (As Perl5 is now, and, say, Java has as a fundamental part of its design.) 2 - If Perl6 is

Re: properties

2001-05-18 Thread Daniel S. Wilkerson
Damian Conway wrote: You may also be wondering what happens if a variable and the value it contains both have a property of the same name. The answer is that we always get back the variable's property in preference to the value's: my $var is Purpose(var demo) = 1 is Purpose(val