Unfinished Ideas

Admittedly, many ideas for Cilia are not yet fully developed, but these really do need some more work.

T^ to Objects of Other Languages

We can redefine T^ for interoperability with other languages, e.g. garbage collected languages like C# and Java.

T^ is defined via type traits SharedPtrType:

• For all C++/Cilia classes T^ is SharedPtr<T>:

  extension<type T> T {
      using SharedPtrType = SharedPtr<T>
  }
  

• Objective-C/Swift classes use their reference counting mechanism:

  class ObjectiveCObject {
      using SharedPtrType = ObjectiveCRefCountPtr
  }
  

• C#/.NET classes use garbage collected memory for instance/object allocation, add instance/object-pointers to the global list of C#/.NET instance pointers (with GCHandle and/or gcroot).

  class DotNetObject {
      using SharedPtrType = DotNetGCPtr
  }
  

  • Access/dereferencing creates a temporary DotNetGCPinnedPtr, that pins the object (so the garbage collector cannot move it during access).
• Java classes use garbage collected memory, add pointers to the global list of Java instance pointers.

  class JavaObject {
      using SharedPtrType = JavaGCPtr
  }
  

  • Probably very similar to C#/.NET.

T+ is defined via type traits UniquePtrType:

• For C++/Cilia classes T+ is UniquePtr<T>:

  extension<type T> T {
      using UniquePtrType = UniquePtr<T>
  }
  

• For Objective-C/Swift, C#/.NET, and Java the UniquePtrType will be very similar to the SharedPtrType, maybe even identical.

Exotic Operators (e.g. Unicode)

• ⊕, ⊖, ⊗, ⊘, ⊙, ⊛, ⊞, ⊟, ∪, ∩, ∖, ∈, ∉, ∋, ∌, ∧, ∨, ¬, ∷, ∶, ∝, ∼, ≈, ≉, ≠, ≤, ≥, ≪, ≫, ⊂, ⊃, ⊆, ⊇, ∅, ∇, ∂, ∞, ∑, ∏, ∫, ∮, ∵, ∴, ∗, ∘, ∙, ∟, ∥, ∦, ∠, ⟂, ≜, ≝, ≔, ≕
• Reserved for future use, as it could get complicated and confusing.
  • Especially to differentiate
    • operator precedence and
    • unary (prefix, postfix) or binary (infix) operators.
  • Many seem more suitable for a computer algebra system (CAS), not for a general purpose programming language.
• |x| for abs(x)?
  • ||x|| for norm(x)?
    • This would interfere with || as logical or.
  • This form is called as “enclosing operator”, “delimited form”, “bracketed expression”, or informally as a paired prefix/postfix or “sandwich operator”.
  • More variants?
    • ≪...≫
    • ‹...› , «...»
    • ⦅...⦆ , 〚...〛 , ⦃...⦄
    • （...）, ［...］, ｛...｝, ｟...｠
    • 「...」, 『...』, 〈...〉, 《...》, 【...】, 〖...〗, 〔...〕, 〘...〙, ⦗...⦘
  • Some may be used in reversed order: ≫...≪
  • Also see Unicode Math Brackets

OpenMP-like Parallel Programming

• Serial code

  Float[] arr = ...
  for i in 0..<arr.size() {
      arr[i] = 2 * arr[i]
  }
  

• Parallel code

  for i in 0..<arr.size() parallel { ... }
  

  for i in 0..<arr.size()
  parallel batch(1024) { ... }
  

  for i in 0..<arr.size()
  parallel if arr.size() > 65535 { ... }
  

  for i in 0..<arr.size()
  parallel if arr.size() > 65535 { ... }
  

  for i in 0..<arr.size() parallel reduce(sum: +) { ... }
  

  for i in 0..<arr.size()
  parallel
  if arr.size() > 65535
  reduce(sum: +)
  schedule(dynamic, 65536) { ... }
  

TODO
Syntactically this is not a good solution.

• We avoid brackets in if and while, but then use it for reduce and schedule…
• Syntax should be better, clearer, or more powerful than plain OpenMP, otherwise better use just that.