James Gosling Interview

Re:James Gosling Interview by ptx on Thursday August 12, 2021 @09:35AM (#28156117)

I don't know much about Tcl, but I thought everything was a string, not a float? It appears to work with integers just fine:

  $ echo 'puts [expr 2 ** 128 + 1]' | tclsh
  340282366920938463463374607431768211457

  $ python3 -c 'print(2 ** 128 + 1)'
  340282366920938463463374607431768211457

  $ node -p 'Math.pow(2, 128) + 1'
  3.402823669209385e+38

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Re:James Gosling Interview by tpoindex on Thursday August 12, 2021 @11:20AM (#28157443)

Tcl hasn't been string based for 20 years, misinformation is hard to eliminate. Since the release of version 8.0 in 2001, Tcl internally has value types for integer, bigints, double, boolean, lists, etc.. As long as you're careful not to cause the internal value to 'shimmer' into a string representation, Tcl maintains the value type as last used. Tcl happily converts values to strings as needed, giving the impression of 'everything is a string'.

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Re:James Gosling Interview by martincmartin on Thursday August 12, 2021 @09:49AM (#28156314)

Yeah good point, I updated my comment. Thanks!

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