Prism Metaprogramming Tool released

Jim Little jiml@inconnect.com
Fri, 29 Oct 1999 18:18:24 -0600


Tom Novelli wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 24 Oct 1999, Jim Little wrote:
> > Hmm... come to think of it, I'm not sure if integer support is necessary
> > at this time.  I've been trying to think of situations where they would
> > be necessary, and I can't think of any.  The only situation I can think
> > of is when you're doing a straight counting loop -- 'for (int i=0; i<3;
> > i++)' -- and those are actually pretty rare in real programs.  You much
> > more frequently iterate through a data structure.
> 
> How do you know what I do? :)
> 
> I use loops like that all the time.  A tight loop is faster if it doesn't
> have to test for some condition every time.  This kind of stuff is
> commonplace, in string manipulation for example.

Okay, in MY real world programs, I tend to use objects and collections
of objects much more often than integers.  As for the loop, well, if it
doesn't test for a condition, it's an infinite loop, integers or no
integers.  :)

At any rate, I didn't mean to imply that integers were useless; just
that I was relying on them more than I needed to in Prism Control (the
Prism VM's 'machine code').  I've since replaced them with abstract
'iterator' atoms.

Jim