Larry,
I have been giving a lot of thought to the way you have been
describing classes lately. I think I understand where you are going
with it, but I need to understand some of the details.
On Oct 14, 2005, at 2:15 PM, Larry Wall wrote:
This only reinforces my view that all the meta stuff for Dog must
be via the .meta or the associated package. There is no Class object.
It's a false dichotomy. Class is a role that manages partially
instantiated objects, just as Routine (or whatever it is these
days) is a role that manages partially instantiated sub calls.
And they mostly manage by delegation to .meta.
If I understand you correctly then, what I have been calling a class
object is just really the "thing" on the other end of .meta.
When I say "class object", I mean some kind of object instance which
contains all the information to describe a class (methods, meta-
attributes, superclass list, etc). This can just as easily be called
a metaclass instance too, it makes no difference to me.
As for the idea that "Class is a role that manages partially
instantiated objects", I am not sure i am understanding what you mean
here. I am assuming this is along the lines of the "Class's are a
special form of undef" idea. In that case I can see where maybe the
Class "thing" is simply a parameterized role of some kind which has
the following behaviors:
1) it evaluates to undef in an expression
my Dog $fido;
if ($fido) {
# this won't run, $fido is not yet defined
}
2) it acts as a proxy if a method is called on it
my Dog $fido;
$fido .= new();
If this is true, then maybe Class looks something like this:
role Class[MetaClassType $T] {
# evaluate to false in bool context
method prefix:? () { bool::false }
# probably need to overload some other
# operators here too, but I will leave
# that for now
# the AUTOMETH checks for an calls
# any method you attempt to call on
# this particular class
# ( I am not sure about the details
# of the code here, but you get the
# idea I think )
method AUTOMETH { $T.can($_).([EMAIL PROTECTED]) }
}
Then if this were so, then the following:
my Dog $fido;
Would be de-sugared into:
my $fido = Class[Dog].new();
At least this is how I am seeing it currently in my head. Please let
me know if I am way off the mark here, I am trying to understand how
this all will work. Ideally it can fit into the current meta-model
prototype as designed, if not, I have no problem re-writing it again,
but I just need to wrap my head around how this should work.
Thanks much,
Stevan
