Troy Rollins wrote: > On Jun 25, 2004, at 11:10 PM, Ken Ray wrote: >> You see Rev will assume an >> unquoted value as a string unless it is a variable > > It's statements like that which send traditional language > programmers running.
I guess it depends on the programmer. If one is in the formal-language habit of quoting strings this likely won't ever be a problem.
Automatic typecasting is nearly as common in scripting languages as automatic garbage collection. Rev is smart but it isn't psychic so it has to choose a type and, like VB and many others, it chooses a string type because of its flexibilty.
But if the string is numeric it will convert it to a number as needed (a float, if I understand it, but maybe Tuv can jump in and tell us if Rev ever uses ints for things it knows should be ints, like object coordinates).
Once converted to a number, subsequent numeric operations on the variable will be fairly efficient as it won't require another type coersion unless that var is once again used as a string (such as concatenation or chunk expressions).
Even with these productivity benefits, the engine's performance is often on par with fully compiled programs for a wide range of common tasks, and a few uncommon ones.
> I don't expect that to change, but I'm guessing this is what all > the explicit vars noise is about? If so, count me in!
It's a handy feature, requiring the scripter to explicitely declare all local variables in addition to globals. A great way to catch assignment issues before they're executed.
>> perhaps we need another global property like "the explicitStrings" >> which if true would require strings to be quoted? ;-) > > Oh man, that would be great... I thought maybe too much to ask.
Working with explicitVars on should catch those circumstances, as unquoted strings will be assumed to be vars and if not declared will throw a compilation error.
-- Richard Gaskin Fourth World Media Corporation ___________________________________________________ Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev
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