http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1019311


in reply to Re: getting rid of costly special features
in thread getting rid of costly special features

> And as for it being a barrier to porting to JavaScript VMs. Its not that complicated an algorithm.

Not complicated but very slow.

It considerably slows down any numeric increment, which are >99% of the use cases.

> magical string increment was removed from perl,

I didn't say that, I just want a switch to turn it off.

Cheers Rolf

  • Comment on Re^2: getting rid of costly special features

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^3: getting rid of costly special features
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Feb 18, 2013 at 10:19 UTC
    Not complicated but very slow. It considerably slows down any numeric increment

    Care to back that assertion up with some evidence?

    With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
      > Care to back that assertion up with some evidence?

      Strings are immutable in JS, now how would you implement a postincrement?

      Instead of i++ of a primitive value i, you need to use objects for all scalars with methods like i.postInc() and i.preInc() and i.getValue()

      Cheers Rolf

[reply]
[d/l]
[select]

        Essentially what you are arguing is that we should change the Perl5 language and interpreter so that you can replace it with another interpreter written in Javascript. Which is ....!

        Besides which, in order to preserve Perl5's semantics, you would have to have a scalar type that could represent integers, floats, strings and references. Ie. You would have to box your ints.

        Here you are saying that to do so would make things too slow; and yet it is only a few months since you were advocating autoboxing everything in Perl for the sake of some OO ideology, and hang the (enormous) performance hit.

        There's nothing like consistency. And that's nothing like it :)

        With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]

In Section Meditations