Re: Euphoria vs The Other Guys --- and RTFM
- Posted by DerekParnell (admin) May 02, 2014
- 1692 views
Euphoria does not have a string data-type--conventional background expects it. In the past, there have been requests that a string data-type be added to Euphoria--conventional wish. Data storage for a sequence and for a dedicated string are not the same--conventional thinking sees this as a problem. Truly automated output of text data does not exist...for example console:display will sometimes show you a small integer instead of a character--conventional thinking does not understand this.
Euphoria behaves as if it has a string data-type--but not with conventional thinking. Text data in a sequence has unexpected flexibility--not conventional.
Hmmmm... your definition of conventional might be an issue. Many programming languages do not have a purpose built-in string datatype, though most recent ones do.
Euphoria, like all programming languages, makes compromises. Euphoria attempts to prioritise execution speed over complex datatypes. We could create a built-in string type in Euphoria, but the immediate effect will be to slow down all programs ... even ones that don't use the string type. This is because of the object concept in which many data access decisions are made at runtime by Euphoria.
Obviously, a string datatype is not actually required because you can achieve everything right now in Euphoria, so what would it gain if it had one? Less bugs - maybe. Better parse-time error reporting - possibly.
Its a discussion worth having and probably documenting in the manual.
