1. Re: Just say 'YES' to strings (or not?)
Matt Lewis wrote:
> Actually one more branch would hurt, because Rob doesn't have any more
> bits to work with, so he'd have to use some additional storage, or
> completely different way to store type data. It may be possible to achieve
> similar performance with some other scheme, but if so, I don't think that
> anyone has stumbled upon it, and I'm skeptical that it exists.
Well, that is correct, but one added byte per declared variable seems like
a small enough price to pay, especially since it would likely be more than
offset by the savings in string storage.
<snip>
> Maybe, although it might also increase the number of output functions.
> Could we still output a sequence as a string? How are literals handled?
> What if we append an integer (really meaning a character)? I suspect
> that you'd still have all the same, plus a new pretty print type procedure
> that dealt intelligently with your data. Not really a big improvement
> over what we have now.
I can't answer these questions, but the answer is there, for anyone who
wants to study the source for Python, Lua, etc. since they all manage this.
Regards,
Irv
