non-vtable methods on builtin pmcs

[Sam Ruby]

I know that there is no reason why this shouldn't work, but I tried it 
anyway: I tried adding methods to existing (builtin) PMCs.  In this 
case, I added a "find" method to a PyString (a near clone of PerlString).

What I found was that I could add a regular method, but __init methods 
won't get called.  However, any subclasses will be aware of both the 
__init and regular methods.  I've attached the test I produced.

I'm not overly concerned about __init methods, in fact, my concern is 
the opposite: I'd like to solicit opinions on the viability of extending 
pmc2c2.pl to enable non-vtable methods to be defined, in C, in the .pmc 
file itself.

My thoughts are tha languages like Python and Ruby are going to have a 
number of such methods (as well as a few attributes) defined in many of 
the predefined classses.  Any such methods are likely to be frequently 
enough used that optimizing for such cases is warranted.

- Sam Ruby

#! perl -w
# Copyright: 2001-2003 The Perl Foundation.  All Rights Reserved.
# $Id$
=head1 NAME

t/pmc/buildin-meths.t - Builtin Methods

=head1 SYNOPSIS

        % perl -Ilib t/pmc/builtin-meths.t

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Tests the ability to add methods to builtin PMCs.

=cut

use Parrot::Test tests => 2;
use Test::More;

output_is(<<'CODE', <<'OUTPUT', "PyString::find");
##PIR##
.sub main @MAIN
    $P1 = new PyString
    $P1 = "short string"

    $P2 = new PyString
    $P2 = "string"

    $P3 = $P1.find($P2)

    print $P3
    print "\n"
.end

.namespace [ "PyString" ]
.sub __init
    print "In PyString::__init\n"
.end

.sub find method
    .param pmc argument

    $S1 = self
    $S2 = argument
    index $I1, $S1, $S2

    $P1 = new PyInt
    $P1 = $I1

    .pcc_begin_return
    .return $P1
    .pcc_end_return
.end
CODE
In PyString::__init
6
OUTPUT

output_is(<<'CODE', <<'OUTPUT', "SubString::find");
##PIR##
.sub main @MAIN
    getclass $P1, "PyString"
    subclass $P2, $P1, "SubString"
    find_type $I0, "SubString"
    new $P3, $I0
    $P3 = "longer string"

    $P4 = new PyString
    $P4 = "string"

    $P5 = $P3.find($P4)

    print $P5
    print "\n"
.end

.namespace [ "PyString" ]
.sub __init
    print "In PyString::__init\n"
.end

.sub find method
    .param pmc argument

    $S1 = self
    $S2 = argument
    index $I1, $S1, $S2

    $P1 = new PyInt
    $P1 = $I1

    .pcc_begin_return
    .return $P1
    .pcc_end_return
.end
CODE
In PyString::__init
7
OUTPUT