Re: Dynamic variable typing?

• Date: Tue, 23 Jul 1996 18:27:59 PDT
• From:
  Jefferson.M.Dubrule@dartmouth.edu (Jefferson M. Dubrule)
• Reply-To:
  manta@dartmouth.edu

--- Michael Brundage wrote:
   a + b

might translate into

   $type_Vector:+(a, b)

which might perform

   for(i=1; i<=length(a); i=i+1)
     a[i] = a[i] + b[i];
   endfor
   return a;

(with suitable error-checking thrown in)

[deleted]
What does everyone else think?
--- end of quoted material ---

I was thinking of something like this, but for objects.  Basically, if two
objects were added together, it would call and 'add' function somewhere.  The
big problem was "where do I put the result?"

For example

5 + 3 = 8

If 5 and 3 were both objects (say #555, and #333), I guess the call would be
#555 + #333, but then the answer would have to go somewhere.  I thought of
making a class of 'temporary objects' to hold these answers, but that wouldn't
work if the answer was returned or a property set.  The only way to do it would
be to have a reference count kept on each object, and recycle it when it is
reduced to 0.  I finally gave up, but I've got a start, if anyone would care to
take it up . . .

I think this would be very cool, because you could re-define all the
'fundamental' datatypes as objects, and have children of these objects doing
different things (say, a child of '$vector' would be '$complex')

Declaration would be easy, just use ;create(), and casts, etc, would be handled
by verbs on each generic object.

-manta

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