Benjamin Goldberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: >> this is only useful if a hashlookup is fast compared with >> string_make. > > Well, it might be. Hashing can be quite fast, ya know. > > Here's a better idea, one you'll have more difficulty arguing with -- > imagine a debugger, written in parrot. > > We are going to have one, right? Hmm, p6tkdb :) > > It needs to keep references to objects it's interested in, but if > they're strong references, then we would have trouble debugging objects > with custom destroys (or worse, objects needing timely destruction), > since the debugger's references to them would prevent them from being > cleaned up.
In general, I'd expect the Perl 6 debugger to use symbolic references to variables and use %MY based introspection to get at values. Watchlists could be implemented by via properties with closures that refered back to the debugger object. In general it should be possible to implement a remarkably powerful perl 6 debugger without needing weakrefs (though weakrefs wouldn't hurt).
