Lib/boxed

[kaeluka]

Some wrappers for boxed primitives.

Support a show method as a first step towards a general Show trait for printable objects.

[supercooldave]

I see a mix of camel case and snake case.

[kaeluka]

I'm using Uppercase names for boxed types, not CamelCase. The snake case is functions in the pre-existing String lib.

[supercooldave]

maxReal is CamelCase.

[kaeluka]

true!
I'll await the result of the ongoing slack discussion and act accordingly.

[supercooldave]

If the problems don't lie in your code, then your code should be acceptable.

[EliasC]

Nice! Merging after Slack discussion is "done".

[kikofernandez]

should this type be consistent and have the value method to return void?

[supercooldave]

Shouldn't this class be called Unit, as it seems that void and () (Unit) are two different things (FTW)?

[supercooldave]

Curious: what is the motivation behind this?
If we have need boxing, wouldn't it be better to do this under the hood (like in O'Caml or Haskell), especially as our intention, presumably, will be that boxed values are compared by value, not by reference.

[kaeluka]

Even if done under the hood, there'll be classes for those values. If there the "under the hood" stuff will come soon-ish, it might make sense to merge this into the under-the-hood-efforts.

[supercooldave]

If it were done under the hood, there'd probably be a single polymorphic class (perhaps called Box) that did the job of all of these classes.

[kaeluka]

If you had a Box class, you could not have a show method that converts the boxed primitive to string. Implementing support for a Show trait with such a method was my motivation to start this.

Edit: If I'm mistaken, then what @supercooldave says is true and this PR could pbly be rejected!

[supercooldave]

Thanks for providing motivation, albeit in comments not in PR.

[kikofernandez]

what is the status of this PR? I am kind of lost in the whole conversation

[kaeluka]

Good you ask. The last consensus (IIRC) was that it shouldn't go in as long as we're discussing a code convention for encore. We have stopped discussing the code convention. If people don't object, I'd close the PR tomorrow or late tonight to free up some cycles.

[supercooldave]

Executive decision: change the name of the Void box to Unit box, add the corresponding value method, and it can be accepted.

[kaeluka]

@supercooldave: done!