«

In C, I can just read the K&R book and know
how everything is pretty much coded at the
machine level. At least to some extent.

But how does Perl know when you type

print $ref

for example that it is not an integer, string or what have
you?

And how does

print $num; 2 or "Two"

again at the machine level, how does perl know
what it has?

"Tom" <> wrote in message
news:toqdnVRhz5Wr3X7fRVn-...
> In C, I can just read the K&R book and know
> how everything is pretty much coded at the
> machine level. At least to some extent.
>
> But how does Perl know when you type
>
> print $ref
>
> for example that it is not an integer, string or what have
> you?
>
> And how does
>
> print $num; 2 or "Two"
>
> again at the machine level, how does perl know
> what it has?

it's not the complete answer, but the Devel:eek module could give some
hints. Try
http://search.cpan.org/~nwclark/perl...l/Peek/Peek.pm

--
Klaus

I think this is what you want to read:

From Klaus' link:
http://search.cpan.org/~nwclark/perl....pod#Datatypes

or type:

perldoc perlguts

at the CLI.

Dave

"Tom" <> wrote in message
news:toqdnVRhz5Wr3X7fRVn-...
> In C, I can just read the K&R book and know
> how everything is pretty much coded at the
> machine level. At least to some extent.
>
> But how does Perl know when you type
>
> print $ref
>
> for example that it is not an integer, string or what have
> you?
>
> And how does
>
> print $num; 2 or "Two"
>
> again at the machine level, how does perl know
> what it has?
>
>
>
>

Tom <> wrote:

> In C, I can just read the K&R book


The docs that ship with the perl distribution are to Perl what
K&R is to C.


> and know
> how everything is pretty much coded at the
> machine level. At least to some extent.
>
> But how does Perl know when you type
>
> print $ref
>
> for example that it is not an integer, string or what have
> you?


The first sentence of:

perldoc -f print

says "Prints a string or a list of strings."

So all arguments to print() are strings.

Perl must then use the string value of the variable.


--
Tad McClellan SGML consulting
Perl programming
Fort Worth, Texas

"Dave" <> wrote in message
news:LxLEe.15418$...
> I think this is what you want to read:
>
> From Klaus' link:
> http://search.cpan.org/~nwclark/perl....pod#Datatypes
>
> or type:
>
> perldoc perlguts
>
> at the CLI.
>
> Dave
>
> "Tom" <> wrote in message
> news:toqdnVRhz5Wr3X7fRVn-...
> > In C, I can just read the K&R book and know
> > how everything is pretty much coded at the
> > machine level. At least to some extent.
> >
> > But how does Perl know when you type
> >
> > print $ref
> >
> > for example that it is not an integer, string or what have
> > you?
> >
> > And how does
> >
> > print $num; 2 or "Two"
> >
> > again at the machine level, how does perl know
> > what it has?
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>

It looks to me that these scalars are carrying around
alot of baggage. Does it need to carry this baggage
on the function calls?

"Tom" <> wrote

>
> It looks to me that these scalars are carrying around
> alot of baggage. Does it need to carry this baggage
> on the function calls?
>

Think of it as the scalars carrying around a pointer to the baggage (rather
than carrying around the actual baggage) - which is not such a big load to
be carrying.

Cheers,
Rob

"Sisyphus" <> wrote in message
news:42e463b2$0$27469$ u...
>
> "Tom" <> wrote
>
> >
> > It looks to me that these scalars are carrying around
> > alot of baggage. Does it need to carry this baggage
> > on the function calls?
> >
>
> Think of it as the scalars carrying around a pointer to the baggage
(rather
> than carrying around the actual baggage) - which is not such a big load to
> be carrying.
>
> Cheers,
> Rob
>
>

But that isnt true.

Also sprach Tom:

> "Sisyphus" <> wrote in message
> news:42e463b2$0$27469$ u...
>>
>> "Tom" <> wrote
>>
>> >
>> > It looks to me that these scalars are carrying around
>> > alot of baggage. Does it need to carry this baggage
>> > on the function calls?
>> >
>>
>> Think of it as the scalars carrying around a pointer to the baggage
>> (rather than carrying around the actual baggage) - which is not such
>> a big load to be carrying.

> But that isnt true.

Oh, it isn't? Then maybe you explain us how the innards of perl work. I
am sure you know much better than those people who have worked with perl
on the C-level.

Tassilo
--
use bigint;
$n=71423350343770280161397026330337371139054411854 220053437565440;
$m=-8,;;$_=$n&(0xff)<<$m,,$_>>=$m,,print+chr,,while(($ m+=<=200);

"Tom" <> wrote in message
news:bpednXYY1fzsmXrfRVn-...
>
> "Sisyphus" <> wrote in message
> news:42e463b2$0$27469$ u...
> >
> > "Tom" <> wrote
> >
> > >
> > > It looks to me that these scalars are carrying around
> > > alot of baggage. Does it need to carry this baggage
> > > on the function calls?
> > >
> >
> > Think of it as the scalars carrying around a pointer to the baggage
> (rather
> > than carrying around the actual baggage) - which is not such a big load
to
> > be carrying.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Rob
> >
> >
>
> But that isnt true.
>
>

I'm not the best person to be giving an explanation at this level but I
think I understand where your confusion arises. I often see written
something like "a scalar (such as $x) is represented in Perl as a C
structure of type SV". (This statement equates a perl scalar to an SV.) I
would prefer to see it written as "a scalar (such as $x) is represented in
Perl as a pointer to a C structure of type SV". (This statement equates a
perl scalar to an SV*.)

When you pass a scalar to a function at the perl level, what's actually
happening at the C level ? You're passing a pointer to an SV structure to
the function.

Do you have a C compiler ? If you do, then here's a little Inline::C demo
you could run:

use warnings;
use Devel:eek;

use Inline C => <<'EOC';

void foo(SV * x) {
printf("%x\n", x);
}

EOC

# Start perl code
$z = 17;
Dump($z);
print"#########\n";
foo($z);
__END__

For me that produces:

SV = IV(0x89dab4) at 0x3f5d3c
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (IOK,pIOK)
IV = 17
#########
3f5d3c

Note that at the C level, foo() receives an argument of type SV* - ie a
pointer to an SV structure.
And at the perl level foo() takes a simple scalar as its argument - ie $z.
Note also that the value output by foo() matches the address of the SV
structure. That's not a coincidence

So ... when I'm calling foo($z), the baggage is staying put. All I'm really
passing is a pointer to all of that baggage.

In a similar fashion, we can create a perl scalar at the C level.

use warnings;
use Devel:eek;

use Inline C => <<'EOC';

SV * foo() {
SV * x;
x = newSViv(17);
return x;
}

EOC

$z = foo();

Dump($z);

__END__

That produces output of:

SV = IV(0xb492e at 0x3f5d3c
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (IOK,pIOK)
IV = 17

At the C level, an SV structure has been created, and a pointer to that
structure (an SV*) has been returned. Yet as far as perl is concerned, the
foo() function has returned a scalar variable.

Hth. (More importantly, I hope it's accurate. If not, I'm sure that someone
will correct it as needed.)

Cheers,
Rob

Tom wrote:
> again at the machine level, how does perl know
> what it has?

I'm curious to know why you ask this question. If you want a language
that is closer to the hardware, then you know where to find C, or even
assembly. The whole point of a higher level language like Perl is to
unburden (is that a real word?) the user from such information. As a
Perl user, you don't need to keep track of whether a scalar is an
integer, string, reference or whatever. You can rest assured that:

print $x;

will do the Right Thing (tm) irrespective of what $x contains. This
comes at the expense of more memory usage. If your goal is to optimize
memory/performance, then you should be looking at a lower level language
like C.

--Ala