Re: Re: Check this out for a good laugh

thanks Artem for your answers. but I guess I didn't
ask the right questions after all.

so, T! is the "option type" for T, right? because T?
is the "nullable type" and it's already in C#. T?
meaning it's value is either a T object or null. T!
meaning it must be a T object. T meaning we don't
care, so for [T resolves to List] it means T can
either be a List or null, but naturally for [T
resolves to int] the null case cannot possibly arise
because it is a primitive thing. am I right? Nice is
much more coherent in my opinion. there should be no
syntactic difference between different types, but that
might be a very idealistic approach, I am not sure.

> I don't quite get your question, but there is a
> "null pointer check"=20
> performed by some compilers (GCC) to throw the
> NullPointerException, and=20
> one of optimizations they planning is this null
> pointer check removal,=20
> but these optimizations, even if implemented, are
> limited to some local=20
> scope, so having optional types in the language
> itself might improve the=20
> performance.

the sort of optimization you are talking about is of
course welcome, but I was basically worried about
this: if the language does not make *any* distinction
between primitive types and reference types, should
this affect performance? I guess the only reason Java
decided that int's won't inherit Object was this
performance issue.

or maybe I am wrong. if you call a method with either
an integer variable or a struct (in C#, they are value
types), the value is copied and anything you do to
them (like changing the value of a field in the copied
structure) does not affect the original. so structs
are passed by value. M$ claims that as for this
strategy (the copy of) the struct is placed in a stack
rather than allocated in a heap, things are faster. so
structs being lightweight pays off. are they right?


	=09
__________________________________=20
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005=20
http://mail.yahoo.com


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