Re[2]: bit-ops

[Doug Rogers <rogers@...>]

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Antero Vipunen wrote:

> Is there any specific reason for having not '~' but '#' as
> unary-bitwise-not symbol?

It is certainly a matter of taste. I would have preferred to use the C 
notation throughout, but since '^' was taken I had to come up with a 
replacement for XOR, and what is bitwise negation but an XOR of all the 
bits in the word with 1? Since '~' is used in '~=' in Lua, meaning
logical negation, I thought '#' a better fit. Originally I used '~',
just as you suggest.

It's fairly easy to change. I did not attempt to understand the Lua 
internals much when I wrote the patch. I just copied the patterns that I 
saw and added a single conversion routine for hexadecimal.

I was hoping for some input from others. I discussed it with Asko and at 
least one other person at the time. I considered a using a two-
character token: a 'bit-wise' indicator followed by the operator.
So 'a#|b' for 'bitwise or', 'a#^b' for 'bitwise XOR'.

If there's a consensus on what would be better, I have no problem changing 
it. I'd love to have it be part of the language even, but I understand 
that my domain (communications) does not have the presence as other 
domains, such as game scripting, where bitwise operations are less common.

Doug

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Doug Rogers - ICI - V:703.893.2007x220 www.innocon.com
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