ADTs
nkuipers
nkuipers at uvic.ca
Tue Mar 4 13:40:29 CST 2003
Hello,
So I'm taking this course in data structures in Java. For example, a java
sequence inherits from vectors and lists, and iterators extend positions.
Since my first language is Perl, this naturally has me thinking about ADTs in
Perl. I looked around CPAN for "ADT" and "List" and "Vector" and such, and
was surprised at the apparent lack of Perl representations of such constructs.
The closest thing I found was Class::Struct. Now, I fully realize that
between hashes and arrays, and the rich set of Perl built-ins (like splice),
there isn't really a *need* for CPAN modular definitions of doubly linked
lists and so forth. But what if I don't want to program with fundamental
types yet stick with Perl? These abstractions make for easy programming and
self-documenting code (at least for a maintainer or someone not too familiar
with Perl), and I'm curious if I missed something on CPAN or if this simply
isn't a Perl thing to do. Perl includes the fundamental data types scalar,
array, and hash, would it be appropriate to also include a selection of ADTs?
Cheers all,
nathanael
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