[KinoSearch] Feature request: overloading

[webmasters at ctosonline.org]

On May 20, 2009, at 4:18 PM, Marvin Humphrey wrote:

> We wouldn't implement the tie functions in C, they'd be in Perl.   
> There has to
> be a C element, though, because of the way that KS objects create  
> and cache
> their Perl objects from C.
>
> However, I'm reluctant to add overloading to just I32Array.  I don't  
> like
> overloading very much -- in my experience, it makes troubleshooting  
> very
> difficult, because you can't trust your ordinary debugging  
> techniques.  (For
> instance, troubleshooting POD::Pom, which uses string overloading,  
> drove me
> bananas.)  Hence my preference for conversion to real Perl elements.
> KinoSearch::Doc uses hashref overloading, but Doc is kind of a  
> special case.
>
> If we were to add overloading to I32Array, I'd want to think hard  
> and solve
> this as an interface design problem generally for all integer arrays,
> including BitVector -- because I don't want to inflict a rarely- 
> needed,
> half-baked overload API on the user base.  I can't make time or  
> brainspace for
> that design discussion right now, though, because there are other  
> tasks that
> are more pressing and I32Array isn't even public.  The current  
> regime is good
> enough for hacking on undocumented APIs -- and hopefully, the  
> changes from
> last weekend will have improved matters somewhat.

Please don’t lose any sleep over it. It’s not that important. When it  
comes to debugging overloaded objects, that hasn’t caused any trouble  
for me since I started using DDS. DDS supports everything except ties  
and IO/FORMAT refs. I have a modified version that supports ties, if  
you ever need it....

Father Chrysostomos