On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Steve Fink wrote:
> I'm getting a little confused about what we're arguing about. I will
> take a stab at describing the playing field, so people can correct me
> where I'm wrong:
The current big issue is whether non-PMC parameter types get counts.
There's not really anything else up for dispute. I think the for/against
argument there is:
for) Since we can't guarantee any sort of compiletime/runtime coherence,
if we're passing parameters in I/S/N registers we need to note how many.
against) That takes a lot of time and is unneeded most of the time
While I sympathize with the argument against, for it to be a feasable
soulution would require that runtime signatures not change from what was
in place at compiletime. Given that there may be some significant amount
of time between run and compile times (what with precompiled executables
and libraries), and that we are in general targeting, supporting, and
expecting fairly dynamic languages I'm expecting that we're going to have
issues here.
While the code that uses N/I/S registers is likely going to run at a lower
level than most perl/python/ruby code, we're looking to encourage their
use with HLL prototypes and such, which means we're going to see more use
of low-level types than we might have in the past, so we're going to get
more use of them than I think folks might be expecting.
> The other question is how much high-level argument passing stuff (eg,
> default values) should be crammed in. The argument against is that it
> will bloat the interface and slow down calling. The argument for is
> that it increases the amount of shared semantics between Parrot-hosted
> languages. An example of how default values could be wedged in is to
> say that any PMC parameter can be passed a Null PMC, which is the
> signal to use the default value (which would need to be computed in
> the callee, remember), or die loudly if the parameter is required.
> Supporting optional integer, numeric, or string parameters would be
> trickier. Or disallowed.
That's something separate, though needing addressing.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
