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From: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <24050:04:06:08@stealth.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 22 Feb 90 04:06:09 GMT
References: <22569:05:10:24@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <8475@wpi.wpi.edu> <4489:05:14:19@stealth.acf.nyu.edu> <1873@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM>
Reply-To: brnstnd@stealth.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Organization: IR
Lines: 60

In article <1873@wrgate.WR.TEK.COM> daniels@teklds.WR.TEK.COM (Scott Daniels) writes:
> A pet peeve: why only decimal radix for floating point?

Yeah. (Anyone know why Ada stops at base 16?)

> Another thing I would like to be able to do is to indicate that a function
> is "pure" (only depends on its args),

I like this.

> On strings: SAIL had strings which consisted of a length and pointer part

Library problem. It should be kept in mind as a syntax issue.

> (1) How about some way to provide structs which have negatively indexed 
>     fields as well as positively indexed fields.

I'm not sure what you're looking for.

  [ struct layout ]

Must this be forced upon the compiler? Quality-of-implementation issues
are important but I can't imagine a portable program taking advantage of
this.

> (3) Allow "anonymous" incorporation of a structure (or union):

Yeah. JHA suggested ``inherit''---makes perfect sense to me.

  [ integral[1..29] ]

This seems reasonable.

  [ % ]

Would someone please show me an example of a real program that uses C's
% in a context where not knowing the sign would be okay? Until that
example shows up, this argument is purely facetious.

It's fine to have two portable operators with different results, like
Ada's rem and mod.

> >I agree with C's philosophy of only allowing bit packing inside structures. 
> But, it would be nice to have a packed vector of bits available somewhere
> (inside structures only would be fine with me).

Do you mean an actual array of bits? How would you integrate this with
the normal meaning of arrays?

> Type coersions:
>     Something between C's "forget all your type checking" and many other 
> language's "you can't get there from here."  How about a coersion that
> has both `from' and `to' parts.

Wait a minute! C's weak typing has nothing to do with the overloading of
its conversion functions. Even Ada, with the strongest typing around,
has overloaded conversions. Merely introducing the above change wouldn't
do anything to C's type checking.

---Dan