Perl is worse! (was: Python is Wierd!)
William Tanksley
wtanksle at dolphin.openprojects.net
Fri Jul 28 14:45:50 EDT 2000
On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 15:40:36 GMT, Steve Lamb wrote:
>What about a way to define a variable that you want to be mutable.
That simply can't be done, because in Python variables are only handles to
data.
Fortunately, what you want IS possible. Simply define a class whose
__init__ function takes a single argument, converts it to a string, and
stores it. Then define all of the operators the way you expect them to
behave.
a = Transformable(5)
print 5 + a
print a + "1foo"
b = Transformable("6")
>in programming, like rollover of integers in C, but I digress). Why not,
>then, allow the programmer to say, "Yes, convert /this/ variable as needed
>based on context"? A JUST_DO_IT!!!! flag, if you will?
Again, there's no way to mark a variable, but it's not hard to create a
datatype which is thus polluted. It IS hard to come up with meaningful
operations, you'll find; Perl is actually quite impressive in how it built
its operations.
> Steve C. Lamb
--
-William "Billy" Tanksley
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