hi,
I've been playing a bit with the new set_*/get_* ops that implement the
new calling conventions, according to pdd03.
If the number of passed arguments is larger than the number of
parameters the function takes, an exception is thrown (this is the
overflow case described in PDD03) (except when the final target is a P
register with the FLATTEN bit, then it just works like "foldup")
I wonder what the reason is to throw an exception. With dynamic
languages, you can't be sure what function you are calling (you can set
them dynamically, I must admit I don't know Perl, and therefore don't
know if this is an issue with Perl). Wouldn't it be easier to just
discard the values that are passed to the function? Obviously, the
function has only use for the number of parameters it has defined, so it
doesn't care about the extra values.
(I know, one could just put an extra P target in all function definition
-- with the FLATTEN bit set --, and this exception wouldn't occur, but
this seems a bit a waste of copying the args to the targets, another
possibility is to catch the exception and do nothing, but that too, is
not very efficient I think).
The same is true for underflow: why wouldn't you just set the targets
for which there is no value left (so too few arguments were passed) to None?
Yet another question, but not directly relating to the new pdd03, but in
fact a question in general wrt calling conventions: pass by ref/pass by
value.
If I understood correctly, I, N and S registers are passed by value, but
P registers are passed by reference. I couldn't find any possibility to
pass PMCs by value; one would have to create a new PMC in the called
subroutine, and _assign_ the passed-in argument to this newly created
PMC. This may of course be the desired behaviour for Perl and friends,
but wouldn't it be neat to have a possibility to pass PMCs by value as
well? (This could easily be indicated by the flags of the new opcodes
set_args/returns and get_params/results, I think).
This possibility would make Parrot more general.
Kind regards,
klaas-jan
