<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 07/01/2008, <b class="gmail_sendername">mike clemow</b> <<a href="mailto:gelfmuse@gmail.com">gelfmuse@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Kassen,<br><br>That actually doesn't make sense to me. 2::second has no reference point to when it started or when it ends. It's just 2 seconds of duration. So, for me, this:<span class="q"><br><br>2::second $ time => time later;
<br><br></span>seems so implicit that it's ambiguous. </blockquote><div><br>I see where you are coming from, but "now" really is a duration already, in a way.<br><br><<<now /minute>>>; is quite legal and will return a float expressing the amount of minutes the VM has been alive. I see "now" and other times as a duration with the start of the VM as it's start.
<br><br>So; we can divide "now" by a duration and get a float but a float times a duration will always be a "duration" and not a "time", so far, in practice.<br> </div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I would, however, agree that there ought to be a (dare I say) keyword for the time at which the VM started so that you could basically do the same thing that you did in the first line.
<br><br>vmstart + 2::second => time afterVmStarted;</blockquote><div><br>A keyword for this may not be enough. The following is a attempt to create my own "birth" keyword expressing this. I can't get it smaller then this and I would say this is quite perverse in a way;
<br><br> //strongly typed meets strongly timed :¬p<br>//at least it runs and works....<br>now - ((now /samp)::samp) => time birth;<br><br>I'd say this means casting can make sense but I'm open to ideas.<br> <br>
<br><br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Of course, you could just approximate this functionality by having this line run the moment the vm starts:
<br><br>now => time vmstart;<br><br>Then, you'd be able to the do everything relative to that time. At least, that's how I would solve it.
</blockquote><div><br>Maybe you'll like my attempt above too.... well, I think it works....<br><br>Kas.<br><br><br></div></div>