[673] in Coldmud discussion meeting

more comments

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Wed Mar 8 14:09:21 1995 )

From: crag@serial.MIT.EDU (Robert de Forest )
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 1995 13:01:13 -0600 (CST)

Operators: I was thinking of -> as meaning "goes to" or "points to", but I
 agree that <- is more obvious in that it looks like the expression is put
 into the variable. It also happens that x = y = z = 0 becomes x <- y <- z <- 0.

In typing that I found that < requires a shift and - does not which is RATHER
 annoying. Let's look for something that doesn't require any shifting. The only
 unshifted punctuation is ,./;'[]-=\` and we can rule out each of those my
 themselves pretty easily. Something with = in it would be good. That makes the
 following possible: {,./;'[]-=\}= and the same thing with = in front.

I can almost see using .= but I don't really like it any better than = by
 itself.

Perhaps something that's all shifted? Shifted punctuation is 
 ~!@#$%^&*()_+|{}:"<>?

I believe all of those are taken.

With all that said I pick <- with no reason other than taste and the fact that
 it can't be read as 'equals' (and that it makes for a nice flow thing for
 chained assignments).

Private or Local methods: I would like to see a distinct way of calling local
 methods to give us the performance boost. Jordan used :foo() in his version
 but I don't like that because of MOO. What about foo()? The compiler can
 generate a local method call rather than a builtin function call if the
 identifier isn't a valid builtin.

The immediately obvious problem is the possible confusion. Someone might see a
 local function somewhere and think it was a builtin and be surprised that it
 doesn't work.

What about ^foo()? I don't remember if we're suing ^ for anything. I also don't
 much like how it looks. Feh. I'll let someone else suggest something.

More things I'd like to see/add to the server:

dump_object/load_object - Converts an object too and from a list of strings in 
 textdump format. Useful for in-db porting, revision control, and core building
 and updating. This should be easy to implement since the server already knows
 how to read and write textdumps. Just have to change where it reads and writes
 them to and make it do it for only one object.

assemble/dissassemble - Not that I like MOO or anything, but I think these would
 be a great way to allow in-db compilation (if anyone is ambitious enough),
 to let people see the innards of the server for educational purpouses, and to
 optimize their methods if the server's comiler isn't good enough for some
 reason.

default methods (:"*" in MOO) - This has been mentioned before (as have all of
 the above), but I have actual idas for how to do it: have a system object
 method assign_default_method(obj, meth) and a deassign_default_method(obj).
 When a message is sent to the object and the method search fails on a parent
 which has a default method, that method is called with the message sent as the
 first parameter. I'd also add a pass_to(method, args) function to let the
 default method pass the message or a different one to a parent.

WHEW!

That's all I have on my mind for now.

Crag