Function return values in GMP? (James Wheaton)

[Hans Aberg]

On 2 Mar 2006, at 17:08, Décio Luiz Gazzoni Filho wrote:

> On Mar 2, 2006, at 10:21 AM, Hans Aberg wrote:
>
>> On 2 Mar 2006, at 00:33, Décio Luiz Gazzoni Filho wrote:
>>>
>>> Actually that is a well known problem with operator overloading  
>>> in C+
>>> + and which has been solved (though not 100% satisfactorily) using
>>> the technique of `expression templates', which by the way is
>>> implemented in the C++ wrapper for GMP.
>>
>> This does not solve the problem, because templates just provides a  
>> static (compile time only) programming
>
> Expression templates solve the problem for 99.9% of users.

Please back this up with facts. :-)

> Now certainly there are the hardcore abstract OO types who want to  
> do everything dynamically. Still, I don't see why it'd be  
> impossible to use expression templates and dynamic typing  
> simultaneously.

It's only that it's wholly unnecessary. Once one starts with dynamoc  
programing there is littyle use and little point with templates.

> Meaning you could write code like this:
>
> ----------
> base_t* x = new derived_t;
> base_t* y = new derived_t;
>
> *x = *x + *y;
> ----------
>
> and get the correct behavior without temporary generation.

And how do you get it into polymorphic class hierarchy? And when  
done, how does the virtual function class interface look like?

> Of course, it'd require some modifications from, say, the C++ GMP  
> wrapper in order to generalize it, but it's possible. Now writing  
> code where the expressions themselves are generated at runtime, say  
> a calculator parsing user input, might indeed not work -- I haven't  
> thought enough about it to be sure.

So it seems. :-) Why don't you try it? :-)

   Hans Aberg