Re: New variable type: matrix

At 04:58 PM 8/28/00 -0600, Doug Hunt wrote:
>What I meant to say (but failed, alas) was that I support the idea for a
>new perl variable type called compact array:
>
>$foo -- scalar
>@foo -- array
>%foo -- hash
>^foo -- compact array (or whatever notation)

This isn't really needed--a compact array is just an array with Fancy Bits 
living under the hood. Now, on the other hand, if you wanted to define a 
new type for matrices, that would make sense. (Though then you have to 
wonder what the difference between a 1-D matrix and an array was...) 
Hijacking * as the prefix for matrices wouldn't be unreasonable--it's sort 
of a picture of something with bits going in multiple directions.

On the other hand, just extending out arrays to be multidimensional may 
well be good enough.

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
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