Breaking the type tree with modifiers
A language’s type hierarchy is formed with both linking and attributes. But what if a uniform hierarchy is not the …
Author Archives:
Modelling type systems: The basics
I’m in the midst of reworking a significant aspect of the type system in Leaf. It’s a lot of work, …
Overloading the broken universal reference ‘T&&’
C++11 introduced a perfect forwarding mechanism for template parameters. The key part is the ability for a template parameter to …
How to catch a “return” statement
Does ‘return’ always cause a function to return? Surprisingly the answer is “no”. Indeed there are situations in which ‘break’ …
Building blocks: Compiling if, defer, break, continue, and exceptions
One way to convert source code to machine code is via “basic blocks”. After parsing and semantic processing, and just …
1/2 Should Not Equal Zero
There’s something wrong when a language allows 1/2 to equal 0. It’s easy to understand why this happens, and perhaps …
Why do we need pointers/references?
Below I’ve tried to catalog some of the typical uses of references in programming. My aim is to clarify the …
Parsing an exact decimal value using GMP
For Leaf, I need to parse decimal numbers to retain the exact value of the input without rounding. I assumed …
Leaf: Simple type conversions
One of the problems with C++ is the way it handles type conversion. It inherits a lot of implicit conversion …
Leaf: Preserving “lvalue” status
I’ve been reworking how I handle basic type conversion in Leaf. This is a mechanism which allows implicit conversion of …
