Re: An overview of the Parrot interpreter

[Sam Tregar]

On Mon, 3 Sep 2001, Nathan Torkington wrote:

> > Ok, so one example of a PMC is a Perl string...
>
> If you grok vtables, think of a PMC as the thing a vtable hangs off.
>
> Another way to think of it is that a PMC is an object.  To the outside
> (the interpreter that is manipulating data values) its contents are
> opaque.  All you can do is call methods (vtable entries) on it.
>
> So if you have an object/PMC that implements a string, the "length"
> method/vtable-entry will return the length of the string.  An
> object/PMC that implements an array, the "length" method/vtable-entry
> will return the number of things in the array.

I think I understand this.  What I don't understand is how this relates to
the next section about Parrot's special relationship with strings.  If
Parrot has a "string" type and string handling functions, why use a PMC
to implement a string?  What does it mean to have a PMC that "implements a
string" and also have a "string type" in Parrot?

-sam