[chuck-users] OOP and Style Qs, Operators

[Spencer Salazar]

Howdy,

On Mar 21, 2007, at 12:57 PM, Veli-Pekka Tätilä wrote:

> Hi Spencer,
> Very useful info. I'll snip a lot and only comment the stuff I have  
> more
> questions or additions for.
>
>> Additionally, you can save a little time/memory by using arrays of
>> null UGen references, rather than arrays of UGens.
> Hmm isn't this a bit suspicious, in terms of semantics. I mean the  
> default
> of instanciating arrays as though objects where already  
> constructed. If they
> are added, that design cannot support classes that lack a  
> parameterless
> constructor, singleton classes in which it is private, and abstract  
> classes
> or interfaces which cannot b instanciated in the first place.

That should be okay--when constructors and abstract classes are  
finally implemented in ChucK, the gotchas you mentioned can and  
should be caught by the compiler.

> IS string also
> a class? I read something to that effect but cannot find its methods
> anywhere. I don't seem to be able to do much apart from  
> concatenating them.

It is a class, but it doesn't have any documented methods (yet).

>>> will there be a template mechanism or the ability to
>>> downcast
>>> arguments?
>> You can always cast them to back to what they were initially, using
>> the $ operator.  You just have to actually know what they are.
> Ah that's the question. Quite OK for homogenous stuff but I can  
> already
> imagine a design in which this is not known. IN which I have to  
> branch on a
> type name. That's a bad smell in OOPy circles often but not always.  
> Many
> recursive data structure dumpers require, for example, that you  
> know whether
> an element is a single item, some reference to an array or object or
> something else. Not very relevant to chucK right now, though, as  
> there's no
> serialization support.

Yes, ChucK is definitely not the language for OO purists...

>> don't know yacc either, but in my experience its pretty easy to  
>> pick up
>> the
>> basics by just reading a .y file.
> Ah I'll take a look. I'll be lazy and ask if there's a direct URL  
> to the
> current CHucK yacc  grammar. I usually don't get the source, though  
> in this
> case it might be beneficial.

You'll probably have to take a look at the source, as the repository  
is not online.  If you have a cvs client on your machine, then  
something like

cvs -d :ext:anon-chuck at cvs.cs.princeton.edu:/cvs checkout chuck_dev/ 
v2/chuck.y

should also do the trick.  Just be sure to replace the ' at ' with an  
actually 'at' sign, as I believe the list server automatically  
replaces at signs with ' at ' to foil the spam bots.

spencer

>
> -- 
> With kind regards Veli-Pekka Tätilä (vtatila at mail.student.oulu.fi)
> Accessibility, game music, synthesizers and programming:
> http://www.student.oulu.fi/~vtatila/
>
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