On Sun, May 5, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Matthias Felleisen <[email protected]>wrote:
> > C++ has tried this tack for some time. Sounds like it has failed then. > I can see doing for built-ins but how would you go about > programmer-created operations? Trust the programmer? -- Matthias > Well, I guess some checks can be added, but I don't see the difference between attaching bad properties to a newly created operator and defining a buggy procedure. Laurent > > On May 5, 2013, at 11:00 AM, Laurent wrote: > > > Speaking of invariants, from time to time I would like Racket to know > some properties about its usual operators, so that some usual treatments > get simplified and can be easily generalized. > > > > For example, considering group theory, properties like > 'identity-element', 'absorbing-elements', 'inverse-operator', > 'commutative?', 'associative?' and such could be attached to operators like > `+', `*', `max', `string-append', `hc-append', etc. > > Forms like `for/op' could use this information to know how to loop and > accumulate, and even possibly to optimize the code, even for newly created > operators. > > In the simple case of + and such, one also only needs to define the > binary operator, and the multi-argument procedure can be generated > automatically. > > > > Of course it needs not be tied to group/category/mathematical theory. It > can be about whatever is useful. > > > > It's only an idea, in case this resonates for someone. > > > > Laurent > > _________________________ > > Racket Developers list: > > http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev > >
_________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
