At 07:27 AM 10/2/2001 -0400, Gregor N. Purdy wrote:
>Dan --
>
> > >That brings up an interesting issue. The Ix registers initialize to
> > >zero, as do the Nx registers. These are valid values for those
> > >register types. However, the Sx registers initialize to NULL, which is
> > >not treated elsewhere (such as print_sc) as a valid string value.
> >
> > The registers shouldn't be assumed to initialize to anything. (I'll start
> > stuffing 0xDEADBEEF in there if I have to... :) Only the PMC registers
> > should go to a value, and that's only because it'll cause the GC fits if
> > they don't.
>
>What, then, are the specifications for clear_[insp]?
Set the register set to all zeroes.
>'' (not NULL) seems reasonable for _s. That is, unless all
>string stuff is going to treat NULL as if it were '' and autovivify
>real strings in registers if needed.
This level of stuff's not going to autovivify. That's OK, though, it's not
inappropriate for the interpreter to require you to initialize things
before you use them.
>Is 'pi' a string to be looked up in a table at assemble time and
>converted to an "intrinsic constant table index"
Yes. At some point the assembler needs to have a way to declare named
constants, we just haven't gotten there yet.
>If we look them up late, we could have a mechanism for libraries to
>export new ones and 'pi' would be an short for 'CORE::pi' or
>something.
In case we want to define pi=3? Hey, look, over there! It's Toto! :)
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
