FORTH and Hypercard

[J. Landman Gay]

Mark Wieder wrote:
> Jacque-
> 
> Monday, October 17, 2005, 10:35:14 AM, you wrote:
> 
> 
>>True, though knowing Scott Raney he wouldn't change it even now.
> 
> 
> There shouldn't really be much of a speed difference - the way this is
> usually handled is you create a hash table with the overloaded
> functions. If there's a match in the hash table then you process it
> locally, otherwise you move right on to the builtins. So the only hit
> you take is in a quick lookup in the hash table. It's a direct lookup,
> it's either there or it isn't, and it's compiled and optimized. Should
> actually take less overhead than a scripted function call.
> 
> I sense an inherent incompatibility between the folks who want more
> speed out of the basic engine calls (arrays and such) and the folks
> who want the flexibility of overloading the builtin functions. I fall
> more in the latter category, but not enough to want things to change
> (and possibly break existing behavior).
> 

I can't think of a reason to change it either, but there's no law 
against putting in a Bugzilla feature request if someone really wants it.

-- 
Jacqueline Landman Gay         |     jacque at hyperactivesw.com
HyperActive Software           |     http://www.hyperactivesw.com