This question is not directly aimed at ANTLR but towards language design. If someone wouldn't mind responding or directing me towards the answer to why would I want a primitive type to be treated as an object. In Java and C#, primitive types are treated as objects. It seems to me that by doing so, you would increase the overhead of converting values and thus it would become a detriment to the language. It appears that you might want this to part of your language to make it easier for the user/developer.
The only example that comes to mind is something like this [simple language] Integer BirthYear String showBirth showBirth = "You were born in " + BirthYear.toString() print display I don't see the benefit of making a primitive type an object other than to make it easier to perform operations the user can perform in other ways with less overhead. I can make more of an argument for making composite types as objects. I have a couple of books on language design but none of them address this issue. I believe this would fall under boxing and unboxing. If someone could direct me towards a good reason to implement this in a language, it would be very much appreciated. Thank you, Waverly. ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "il-antlr-interest" group. To post to this group, send email to il-antlr-interest@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to il-antlr-interest+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/il-antlr-interest?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
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