Re: Design Team Issues: Numeric Types

"Michael Lazzaro" <[email protected]> wrote
> (A) How shall C-like primitive types be specified, e.g. for binding
> to/from C library routines, etc?
>
>    Option 1: specify as property
>
>      my numeric $a is ctype("unsigned long int");  # standard C type
>      my numeric $b is ctype("my_int32");           # user-defined
>      my numeric $c is ctype("long double");
>
>      my int $a is range(1000..1255) is unchecked;  # auto-infer 8bit

Just to clarify: I think of the latter (C<range>) for efficient
packing into arrays (e.g. a 5-bit range can be packed efficiently,
even though there is no 5-bit c-type): binding to C routines is
probably best done explicity.

The C<unchecked> property would enable performance
optimizations. Checked-ranges probably catch a few more
bugs, though.


Dave.