Re: a thought on multiple properties

[Michael Lazzaro]

On Thursday, March 13, 2003, at 12:04  PM, Mark Biggar wrote:
What we do need is some way of bundling a bunch of traits together
under a simple name.
Yes, yes, yes.

Defining a Class for this is also overkill.
Ye.. well, no.  Why?

So instead of saying:

        my %pet is Hash of Array of Array of Hash of Array of Cat;
        sub feed (%cats is Hash of Array of Array of Hash
                        of Array of Cat) {...}
You could say
        trait cat_table is Hash of Array of Array of Hash
                of Array of Cat;
        my cat_table %pet;
        sub feed (cat_table %cats) {...}
I think classes are not necessarily the heavyweights some people might 
expect them to be...  I think of them more as types, actually.  
Basically, if you replaced the word 'trait' with 'class', I think the 
current plan is that you can do exactly what you're suggesting:

    class CatTable is Hash of Array of Array of Hash of Array of Cat;

    my %pet is CatTable;
    sub feed (%cats is CatTable);
(note I fixed the last lines to use the right syntax... before, you 
were actually saying that %pet was a Hash of CatTables...)

MikeL