Re:The Phix Programming Language
by antender on Monday March 23, 2020 @12:04PM
(#22665289)
It is dynamicly typed with optional validators built-in. The cool part (and also the main weakness) is usage of resizable array-based vectors for all composite data types. Other distinguishing traits are RC-based GC, no higher-order functions (but ability to pass function pointers), direct memory access via BASIC-like poke. Original Euphoria language wasn't a scripting one, more like C on steroids (for MS-DOS), and its main usage was game prototyping.
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> usage of resizable array-based vectors for all composite data types
Doesn’t this describe many of the modern languages - python’s lists, ruby’s arrays, etc...? Or is the cool part the lack of more specialized classes like dict or set?
Python, actually, is older than Euphoria. :)
The cool part is the focus on cache-local data structure first. Way more popular scripting languages like JS and Lua use hash tables as their primary data structures, Python and Ruby offer arrays as secondary option, but focus on using structs (classes) everywhere. Euphoria answer to this is to use arrays of cells for everything and enum your way out of situations where you need to group things.