OpenEuphoria

Re: subscripts

• Posted by Lewis Townsend <keroltarr at HOTMAIL.COM> May 11, 2000
• 598 views

Hello Robert,


>Lewis Townsend writes:
> > b = {1, 2, 1}
> > c = a [b] -- this would work like x[1][2][1]
>
>I think you meant a[1][2][1].

Yes, I originally used variables like x,i, and a and
decided to change it but forgot to change everything.


>It seems logical that Euphoria should define
>what it means to subscript a sequence with a sequence.
>Another way to define it would be to allow code like:
>
>       a["Lewis"] = 99
>       a["Townsend"] = {1,2,3}
>       ? a["Lewis"] + a["Townsend"]

I don't think I understand this syntax. Does it mean
that it looks for the string "Lewis" in a and replaces
it wit 99? This hardly seems logical but maybe you are
doing something else? In my proposed syntax:
a["Lewis"] = 99 -- would convert to:
a[['L']['e']['w']['i']['s']] = 99
which would generate an error because the innermost
set of subscripts isn't even subscripting anything!
This isn't at all what I was talking about.

>I haven't been impressed enough with either way.
>They are both fairly easy to implement, and won't
>break existing code, but I suspect that neither would
>be used that often or with that much advantage over
>alternative ways of coding. I don't want to clutter
>up the language with lots of features that are rarely
>of much use. It would also allow some
>subscript errors to evade immediate detection.

What about vertical slicing? I believe this would be used
quite often by lots of people. Would it be easy to implement?
Also, I guess that my main point is that I would like sequences
to be legal subscripts. Of cours it could still flag an error
if someone tried this:

x = {1,2}
a = {1,2,3,4}
? a [x] -- ERROR
-- obviously 'a' isn't a two deminsional sequence so it would
-- error out with a subcripting an atom message.

> > If anyone is interested in why (specifically)
> > I want this, I'll be glad to post a more real-life example.
>
>Sure. Let's see it.

Okay, I have some code I'm working on (and will post it too
if you like), but here is the jist of what I am doing:

I have a sequence that defines the structure of another sequence.
Let's call the first sequence 'human'. The second: 'Lewis'

human = {{"Name", {"First", "Last"}}, "Age"}
Lewis {{"Lewis", "Townsend"}, 21}

Can you see the relation ship between these?
I now have a function that is fed 'human' and a string
that coresponds to a string inside 'human'

x = GetSubscript (human, "Name")
  -- This would return {1} becuase "Name" is the name of
  -- the first subsequence of 'human'

x = GetSubscript (human, "Name.Last") --I do parsing first
  -- This would return {1,2}
  -- First it looks for "Name" and then it looks for "Last"
  -- returning the appropriate subscripts

I would then like to use these sequences to subscript the
'Lewis' sequence:

x = GetSubscript (human, "Age") -- {2}
Lewis [x] += 1 -- Lewis [2] = 22
x = GetSubscript (human, "Name.Last") -- {1,2}
puts (1, Lewis [x]) -- prints "Townsend"


Obviously this would be helpful with OOP for Euphoria.
You could define classes as I have defined 'human' and
you could define objects similar to how I defined 'Lewis'.
I will post more specific code if you want. This would
allow having "Name" in different places for different
classes. Let me know what you think.

later,
Lewis Townsend
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