I'd like to start a dialog about the P[arrot|erl] interface on the matter of converting low-level types. ord and chr are Perl functions for doing two very specialized conversions, but I'm thinking Parrot needs to provide a general-purpose number/[bit]?string conversion ala Perl's pack/unpack so that all of the conversion functions for all of Parrot's client languages can be written in terms of them.
Certainly sprintf, pack and unpack in Perl should use some underlying tool of Parrot's, and not re-invent the wheel (though each of those will obviously do heavy argument processing in a Perl-specific way, some of which I've already done for sprintf). Should these conversions be individual instructions (e.g. "uint2string") or should there be a single-target "pack" analog in the PBC? Pardon me, if I'm walking old ground, but please do point me to the prior discussion. -- Aaron Sherman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.ajs.com/~ajs
