--- Michael Lazzaro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Thursday, January 30, 2003, at 12:03 AM, Leopold Toetsch wrote: > > Why do you then use a primitive type in the first place? > > > > IMHO: > > > > 1) primitive types are what they are - no undef, no attributes, > just > > e.g. plain integers (or shorts or bits ...) > > > > 2) if you want to store additional information use a "normal" perl > > variable i.e. a parrot PMC. > > > > Why on earth would we want to take advantage of primitive types - > when > > then people additionally want to tuck their birthdate on it? > > > > The array of 1e6 ints takes 1e6 words, the same array of PerlInts > > allocates ~10 times the memory and causes additional a lot of GC > > overhead. > > > > And finally, if you a need a few more bits of information for your > > IntArray[1e6], then wrap it into your own array class - we are > > speaking of perl here - or do we? > > > I think this is a tremendously valuable point. The idea behind > primitive types is that they are "small" and "fast" compared to full > types. If you ask for them, you are explicitly saying you're willing > > to give up a lot of functionality in order to gain maximum > efficiency. > > It's not that we want to avoid making Perl6 too slow. It's that we > want to actively try and make it *fast*. When dealing with primitive > > types -- for large image manipulation, for example -- every spent > clock > cycle matters. We MUST allow some mechanism in Perl6 -- short of > escaping to C -- by which algorithms can be tweaked to have some > degree > of efficiency. > > This is leading me to the conclusion that primitive-typed arrays > should > not be allowed to have defaults, period, and that attempting to place > > one should be a compile-time error. If you want a default, use > C<Int> instead of an C<int>, and it will work fine.
There is no reason why primitive-typed arrays can't have a default. It is the confusion of "default" with "undef" that is causing this problem. If I have: my int @a; print @a[4]; What comes out? Notice, there's no "is default(woo-woo)" in there. Just a plain old primitive array. =Austin
