Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucsd!usc!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!van-bc!ubc-cs!alberta!oha!tony
From: tony@oha.UUCP (Tony Olekshy)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl
Subject: Re: Looking for balanced critique of Perl
Message-ID: <437@oha.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jun 90 10:55:47 GMT
References: <4811@muffin.cme.nist.gov> <STEF.90Jun25223718@zweig.sun>
Organization: Olekshy Hoover & Associates Ltd., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Lines: 36
In-Reply-To: Message <STEF.90Jun25223718@zweig.sun> dated 26 Jun 90 05:37:18 GMT

In <STEF.90Jun25223718@zweig.sun>, stef@zweig.sun (Stephane Payrard) writes:
- 
- Perl is becoming one of my favorite tools.
- Today, I will discuss some of its limitations.
- 
- ... more precisely, Perl so far 
-         1/ has no clean way of: allocating, deallocating,
-             accessing data in memory (ie: no pointer)

Optimizations left as an exercise to the reader:

    $Memory{&UniqueKey($datum)} = $datum;
    push(@Pointers, &UniqueKey($datum));

Stop thinking so low level; that's not what perl is for (IMHO)...

    $C = "-?\\d+\\.?\\d*";	# Coordinate.
    $P = "p:($C):($C):";	# Point.
    $L = "l:($P)($P)b:($C):";	# Line.
    $S = "s:(($L)+)";		# Line String.

    sub GetLines		# Return list of spatial lines in $Polygon.
    {
	local($Polygon) = $_[0];  local(@Out);
	die "Bad Polygon" unless $Polygon =~ s/^$S$/\1/;
	while ($Polygon =~ s/^($L)//) { push(@Out, $1); }
	return (@Out);
	}

Now that's a data structure (and don't laugh, it works, with a
GKS child, and makes a great prototyping workbench -- so there ;-).

--
Yours etc., Tony Olekshy.               Internet: tony%oha@CS.UAlberta.CA
					  BITNET: tony%oha@UALTAMTS.BITNET
					    uucp: alberta!oha!tony