Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
On Thu, 5 Mar 2009, Martin Peach wrote:
Yes it seems to me a string manipulation object like [strncmp] should be able to accept symbols, floats, lists of floats, and messages naming arrays, on any of its inlets that are meant to accept strings.
By floats, you mean a single float representing a single character? If not, then I suppose that any string made of individual float messages would have to be converted to a list of floats first, so that it goes well with all equivalent forms that use a single message per string.
Yes single character, any unicode character will fit in a float.
But now, La Question Qui Tue: if you do a [string append] on two strings of different format, what should be the format of the output?
The first argument of the object would be the name of a table, with a [set( message to change it.
Actually, there's another killer question: if you do a [string append] on two arrays, and that it is agreed that the output should go in an array, in which array does the output go?
If it's like a [strcat] it goes into the table named by its first argument, or the most recent [set( message. I think instead of using zero to terminate the string the destination table should be resized to the length of the resulting string.
Maybe it should be [arrble $1( or [tabray $1( so as not to prefer one over the other.
The problem with that is that the big-endians will think that "arrble" connotes racial discrimination in favour of arrays whereas little-endians will claim that it is "tabray" that is favoured. A more politically correct way of constructing a new term would be by interleaving the letters from both words (inspired by INTERCAL), like "atrarbalye" or "taarbrlaey". This does not really solve the problem but it reduces it by a large factor so that you can conveniently sweep it under the carpet without making too much of an unsightly lump. This is the glory of Psychological Engineering at work.
But little-endians might just get confused by "elbrra" and "yarbat"...I think "eylabrarta" and "yealrbraat" would just compound the problem.
Martin