RE: Python or Perl for a Debian maintainance project?
Andrew Suffield wrote:
> C++ does not have an undef value. Where's your undefined integer? Nor
> does it have accessible multi-valued returns - you have to define an
> entire class to do it.
"an entire class" -- Yeah, so what? It can be as simple as:
class Int {
public:
int x;
Int(): x(0) {};
Int(int new_x): x(new_x) {};
};
Int* value;
value = 0; // undef
value = new Int(0); // 0
(I'm sure you knew that already.) It's not a significant problem. A class is not an enormous monstrosity with regard to memory consumption or code required for handling them. In such simple cases, there isn't even a need for RTTI, which makes the compiled code nearly as efficient as using built-in ints.
And, how do you think does Perl handle *internally* scalar values which may be undef? Until every word of memory has its own "is_null" bit (similar to what most databases do), there won't be another way, and C++ handles it not too bad.
> It makes it harder to avoid using exceptions.
Why?
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