Re: namespaces and classes

"Leopold Toetsch" <lt@toetsch.at> wrote:
> I'm still having troubles, when thinking about namespace PMCs and
> implementation thereof.
> Especially the relationship of class namespaces and the store_global
> opcode.
>
> We have e.g. this PIR snippets:
>
>   .sub main :main
>      cl = newclass 'Foo'       # a class isa/hasa namespace ?!
That's an interesting question.  It seems we've gone down the Perl5-esque 
line of thought to some degree (e.g. we do objects by associating some 
"thing" with a particular namespace).  At the moment it feels to me like a 
class is associated with some namespace N that contains the methods and 
globals (static attributes) associated with that class, but the class is 
conceptually "in" the parent namespace of N.  Whether that's the Right 
Thing, I'm not sure.  If it's not, then we're going to need some seperate 
way of associating methods with a particular class.  I think that's an 
argument for maintaining the status quo...

>      ...
>    .end
>
>    .namespace ['Foo']          # namespace 'Foo'
>
>    .sub __init :method         # a method &Foo::__init
>    ...
>    .end
>
> Currently '__init' is stored with:
>
>   store_global "Foo', '__init', $PSub
>
> (Actually, if the class already exists, the C<add_method> vtable is
> used, but that just does C<store_global> too) But usually, this happens at 
> compile-time,
> or PBC-load-time, when the class 'Foo' doesn't yet exist.
>
> Therefore C<Foo> can't be stored into the proposed 
> class->vtable->namespace,
> as there is no such class (yet).
>
> To actually implement this (and assuming that my thoughts so far are 
> correct)
> I was thinking about this strategy:
>
> The usage of the C<.namespace> directive causes the creation of a new
> namespace PMC with that name. Additionally the namespace PMC is registered
> as a type. This needs a bit of additional code that prevents instantiation
> of namespaces.
>
How would this intereact with, say, getclass?  Would getclass only actually 
find real classes, not just anything registred as a type?

> When now at runtime C<newclass 'Foo'> is executed, we find the existing
> namespace PMC (with all the statically visible methods inside) and just
> promote the namespace PMC into a class PMC.
>
> Is this sane?
I'd really like a way of just saying I want the methods in a class PMC 
statically too - I guess if we had that this problem goes away?  But it's 
also helpful for other reasons.  If you're loading a huge class library, 
having to have a :load sub that does many hundreds of newclass calls really 
slows down startup.  (I've been there and done it.  A PBC that contains just 
empty method bodies for .NET's System.dll took several seconds to do that. 
Admittedly, one :load sub per class, which sucks.  But not having to do 
newclass at all by having all the ParrotClass PMCs created and frozen at 
compile time for the statically known classes would be better.)

Hope this helps,

Jonathan 

• Q: namespaces and classes by Leopold Toetsch
• Re: Q: namespaces and classes by Chip Salzenberg
• Re: namespaces and classes by Jonathan Worthington
• Re: namespaces and classes by Leopold Toetsch