Re: [MacPerl] FNG

[rjk@linguist.dartmouth.edu (Ronald J. Kimball)]

Chris Nandor wrote:
> 
> At 21.51 -0500 1999.01.27, Ronald J. Kimball wrote:
> >This is a characteristic of all the bitwise operators.  The Camel remarks,
> >in the explanation of the binary bitwise operators:
> >
> >  If both operands are strings (and have not been used as numbers since
> >  being set)...
> >
> >It doesn't say anything specific about unary ~, but it must work the same
> >way.
> 
> I don't get it.  This doesn't answer the question of which is preferred,
> number or string, if neither has been used and both are set.  At least, I
> don't think it does.
> 

Based on the observed results, I'd say the number is preferred.  :-)

Actually, I don't think that "used" has a precise meaning.  The bitwise
operators might determine if a scalar has been "used" as a number based
just on whether the scalar has a cached numeric value.  If that is the
case, since SV_NO does have a numeric value, it has been "used" as a
number.  So ~ treats it as a number, not as a string.

That's all speculation; I might do some digging into the guts later to see
if that's really true.

Ronald

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