"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:40350372@news.povray.org...
> Dan P <dan### [at] yahoocom> wrote:
> > I see what you're thinking of on this. I think it is there for
clarity -- 
> > the compiler could always check to see what has been defined and decide
to
> > either create a  new class there or use the reference.
>
>   The reference to what?
>   The thing after 'new' is a type. How can you make a reference to a type?
> Where should the reference point to?

I made everything objects. I don't know what I was thinking there, though -- 
it should be new Color(Color.White), not new Color.White. I'm braindead
today.

>   You can make your scripting language interpreter so that instances are
> always created dynamically for simplicity (that way you don't have to
> make the distinction between a local variable and a reference because
> everything is a reference, like in Java). However, the 'new' keyword
> does not contribute anything to this. It's obsolete and can be
> completely left out without the expressive power of the language
> being degraded.

To create the object dynamically without the new keyword, the interpreter
would need to look up whether what proceeds it is a Class or something that
the user already defined. That would not effect small scenes, but in scenes
with hundreds of thousands of objects, it would show in the parse time. By
using new, the interpreter /knows/ that what follows it is a class.

>   Have you ever wondered why you are not forced to define all your
> objects in POV-Ray inside object{} blocks, why you are not forced to
> put all your material and texture statements into material{} and
> texture{} blocks, etc?

Nope. You're right -- object is implied.

>   Because forcing the user to write something unnecessary is only
> a burden, not a help.
>
>   Even more, object{}, material{} and texture{} are sometimes necessary.
> However, I can't imagine a situation where 'new' would be necessary
> (assuming we are dealing with a language where all class instances
> are created dynamically, as in Java).

I think it would be a really good idea to make everything an instance of a
class. I'm thinking more like Smalltalk where there are no primitives
(that's what I was thinking when I did the Color.White screw-up -- no
primitives). If the parser is written correctly, this should not affect
parse time. However, what I was thinking was more something that isn't like
a scripting language, but instead, enables structured OO programming for
complex logic and true abstraction.

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