Re: Design Team Issues: Numeric Types

On Monday, November 18, 2002, at 01:33  PM, Dave Whipp wrote:
>>      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.

Yeah, I threw that one in because it demonstrated a similar case of 
using properties to represent "hints" that could be optimized at a very 
primitive level, not because the last example itself necessarily 
represents an explicit C type.  Sorry for the ambiguity there...

MikeL