Re: [RFC] Stringify a thread

John Peacock wrote:
>
> As you might guess, I think you are completely offbase here.  Any 
> class which provides it own overloading for stringification and/or 
> numification is in the same boat as what the proposed changes for 
> thread objects.  And no special handling is required to handle them, 
> either. Using the approved methods to interrogate the object is not 
> that difficult.  Violate the sanctity of my opaque objects at your 
> peril, Sir! ;-)
The fact that the stringification of objects produces (by default) a 
unique string in standard format is all I ask.  I don't violate your 
opaque objects - I just want to be able see immediately (a) the type of 
object pointed to by a reference and (b) the unique code for that object.

What you propose is actually a change to the way that references behave 
and not the way that your class behaves.  That is, you want the behavior 
of a reference in certain types of expressions be different depending on 
the class of object that it references.  That is very different from 
overloading a field of a class.

Dumpers need a unique code for the object "pointed to" by a reference.  
The current default stringification of objects gives a code that is 
unique across ALL objects.  If you change that so that the code is 
unique WITHIN a class of objects but not ACROSS all objects then any 
code that tries to keep track of references using a hash 
(i.e.,$objects{$thr}) will have to be broken down into multiple levels 
(i.e., $objects{ref{$thr}}{$thr}). 

Yes, I can type ref($ref) *EVERY* time I am checking a variable in the 
debugger and I can change the dumper to do the same.   Just so that you 
can get a different hash key?  The burden is on you to use $thr->tid() 
for your hash key instead of making an incompatible and inconvenient change.

I *STILL* haven't heard a reason why you want the hash key to be a 
number instead of a string with the word "thread" in it.  You should not 
know or care what the hash key is as long as $thr gives you a unique result.

  - Jim