Re: Numeric Types

On Friday, November 15, 2002, at 01:10  AM, Dave Whipp wrote:
> I still don't understand why we want to go to all this hassle of
> completing a vast list primitives to support mappings onto languages 
> and architectures that have yet to be invented. I still prefer to keep 
> things simple:
>
> my Number $a is ctype("unsigned long int") = 42;
> my Number $b is ctype("my_int32") = 42;

It depends on how much we want to encourage use of the "C-level" 
primitive types.  The primary reason for having those types would 
obviously be to be able to map easily to and from C libraries, but a 
secondary reason would be to allow Perl to act as a lower-level 
language than it currently does (when you're trying for efficiency or 
specific low-level behaviors).  So if you *knew* you were dealing with 
16-bit unsigned integers, you could say

	my uint16 @numarray;

and it would generate the optimal code for such an array.  You could 
instead say:

	my Int @numarray is ctype("unsigned short int");

.... but that's obviously more work, and we still have to support all 
possible combinations of unsigned/long/short/int/etc.

So the decision, I think, is whether or not using such types should be 
encouraged, or discouraged.  I'd actually like to encourage them, for 
expert users: using primitive types when you want fast, primitive 
behaviors.

(One of my own "broad goals" is to see Perl be a valid choice for 
things like gif/jpeg manipulation -- not as fast as C, but not crippled 
either -- and other binary data.  I think having enough builtin types 
to mirror the C types would make that goal more explicit.)

?

MikeL