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- From: kers@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Chris Dollin)
- Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
- Subject: Re: languages which allow the introduction of new operators
- Message-ID: <KERS.92Nov13093149@cdollin.hpl.hp.com>
- Date: 13 Nov 92 09:31:49 GMT
- References: <veit.721491920@du9ds3> <TB06.92Nov11165010@CS1.CC.Lehigh.EDU> <1992Nov12.082643.8415@arb-phys.uni-dortmund.de> <BxLxqu.96C@men
- Sender: news@hplb.hpl.hp.com (Usenet News Administrator)
- Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK.
- Lines: 25
- In-Reply-To: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu's message of Thu, 12 Nov 1992 14:32:54 GMT
- Nntp-Posting-Host: cdollin.hpl.hp.com
-
- In article ... hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
-
- Some of these allow some flexibility in expression syntax. But how
- many of these could conveniently unpack a floating point number into
- its exponent and mantissa? In particular, could you write
-
- exponent, mantissa =.U float
-
- In Pop, you could write
-
- floating_thing.Hermans_dismantle -> (exponent, mantissa)
-
- so long as you'd defined Hermans_dismantle somewhere as a procedure with the
- appropriate effect.
-
- At the moment, you'd have to hack the Pop compiler to make this generate
- in-line code. If there was a machine instruction to do the job, I should
- imagine this might take the compiler-writer, oh, half-an-hour or so. Then
- there's the rest of the week for documenting, porting, testing, checking, and
- justifying the extension to Pop users who'd rather have an even faster garbage
- collector.
- --
-
- Regards, | "Layered protocols give the software implementor a chance to
- Kers. | ruin his performance in each layer." - Don Gillies
-