(j3.2006) Would there be a technical problem if...

[Malcolm Cohen]

> On Jan 17, 2018, at 1:56 PM, Van Snyder <Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov <mailto:Van.Snyder at jpl.nasa.gov> > wrote:
> 
> 
> Anyway, I still don't know whether there's a technical problem for the
> standard or for implementations to allow the passed-object argument to
> be an array.



Apart from being inconsistent with the OO programming model, and therefore it is highly likely that subtle technical problems would abound in any such attempt? we jumped in boots and all with other things that on the face of it seemed ?unproblematic? (if not hugely useful) and the result has too often been a feature that is more trouble to implement than its worth to the users.  So caution is advised along with good use cases.  (The ?dump? procedure case could be an impure elemental ? we already have them, lack of compiler support is not a reason for adding Yet Another Feature ? or could just be an ordinary procedure.)

 

In particular, if we?re going to extend the OO stuff, it seems to me that we should be looking carefully at other OO languages to see whether others found such features appealing, and if they did it, how it was done and what pitfalls they found.  If even C++ found such a feature unappealing, we should exercise even more caution?

 

So for this one, so far so unconvinced.

 

Cheers,

-- 

..............Malcolm Cohen, NAG Oxford/Tokyo.

 

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