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=head1 TITLE
Data: Superpositions
=head1 VERSION
Maintainer: Damian Conway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 14 September 2000
Mailing List: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Number: 225
Version: 1
Status: Developing
=head1 ABSTRACT
This RFC (seriously) proposes Perl 6 provide C<any> and C<all> operators,
and, thereby, conjunctive and disjunctive superpositional types.
=head1 DESCRIPTION
The advantages and possibilities of superpositional programming were
demonstrated in well-received presentations at both YAPC'19100 and TPC 4.0.
It is proposed that the C<any>, C<all>, and C<eigenstates> operators
proposed in those talks be added to Perl 6. Adding them to the core is
suggested because the use of superpositions changes the nature of
subroutine and operator invocations that have superpositions as
arguments. This is currently impossible to reproduce in a module.
Furthermore, the fundamental utility of being able to write:
if (any(@value) < 10) { ... }
or:
die unless all(@tests)->($data);
ought to be available to all Perl users.
Inclusion in the core would also allow the current module-based pure Perl
implementation to be greatly optimized (perhaps even parallelized on suitable
SIMD or other multiprocessing platforms).
A paper proposing the full semantics of superpositions (including their
effect when used as subroutine arguments and operator operands) will soon
be available from:
http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/#Superpositions
=head1 MIGRATION ISSUES
The <any> and <all> functions may collide with existing user-defined
or module-exported subroutine names.
=head1 IMPLEMENTATION
See the Quantum::Superpositions module.
=head1 REFERENCES
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[2] Einstein, A., †ber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes
betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt ("On a Heuristic Viewpoint
Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light"), Annalen
der Physik, v.17, p.132-148, 1905.
[3] Lewis, G.N., The Conservation of Photons, Nature, v.118(2),
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[4] Monroe, C., Meekhof, D.M., King, B.E., Itano, W.M. & Wineland, D.J.
Demonstration of a Fundamental Quantum Logic Gate, Phys. Rev. Lett.
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[7] Cirac, J.I. & Zoller P., Quantum Computations with Cold Trapped
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[8] Gershenfeld, N. & Chuang, I. L. Bulk Spin-resonance Quantum
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[9] Cory, D.G., Fahmy, A.F. & Havel, T.F., Ensemble Quantum
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[10] Deutsch, D. Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing Principle and the
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[11] Deutsch, D. & Jozsa, R., Rapid Solution of Problems by Quantum
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[12] Shor, P. Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Logarithms
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[13] Grover, L.K., A Fast Quantum Mechanical Algorithm for Database
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[14] Wallace, J., Quantum Computer Simulators - A Review, Technical
Report 387, School of Engineering and Computer Science, University
of Exeter, June 1999.
