[antlr-interest] language design
Edwards, Waverly
Waverly.Edwards at genesys.com
Thu May 7 07:16:03 PDT 2009
This question is not directly aimed at ANTLR but towards language design.
If someone wouldn't mind responding or directing me towards the answer to
why would I want a primitive type to be treated as an object. In Java and C#,
primitive types are treated as objects. It seems to me that by doing so, you
would increase the overhead of converting values and thus it would become a
detriment to the language. It appears that you might want this to part of your
language to make it easier for the user/developer.
The only example that comes to mind is something like this
[simple language]
Integer BirthYear
String showBirth
showBirth = "You were born in " + BirthYear.toString()
print display
I don't see the benefit of making a primitive type an object other than to
make it easier to perform operations the user can perform in other ways
with less overhead. I can make more of an argument for making composite
types as objects.
I have a couple of books on language design but none of them address this issue.
I believe this would fall under boxing and unboxing. If someone could direct me
towards a good reason to implement this in a language, it would be very much
appreciated.
Thank you,
Waverly.
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