Re: [Axiom-developer] Unions in Spad

[Bill Page]

On 08 Jul 2007 22:09:03 -0400, Stephen Wilson wrote:
> ...
> Bill Page wrote:
> > Also it seems to me that the untagged union construction should be
> > flagged by the SPAD compiler as deprecated so that the library code
> > can eventually be updated to use the new tagged form that is
> > compatible with Aldor.
>
> There is a lot of code which uses the untagged union, so the
> conversion would be a fair bit of work.  I could experiment with such
> a change in the Axisp repo and solicit everyones help in changing the
> Algebra.  In time, we might be able to get a changeset together which
> could be applied to Silver.  Any thoughts on this?

I think it is a good idea but that it need not be a high priority.
Perhaps related but much more important to me would be a general
cleanup of the output of the SPAD compiler. Right now it might be at
best said to be "spectacularly obscure". (I recall Gaby quoting one of
his students who shared this view of the SPAD output and error
messages.). It seems to me that the current diagnostic output was
intended to be intelligible only to someone who was familiar with the
internal design of the SPAD compiler. Surely it is possible to produce
compiler output that makes sense to someone who only programs at the
SPAD level.

Regards,
Bill Page.