Re: Python recompile

On Wed, 5 Mar 2025 11:46:08 +0000, bart wrote:

* Compile-time enumerations, and parallel tables of enums and data

Python doesn’t have enumerations as a language primitive; instead, they
are implemented in a library module, written in pure Python -- it doesn’t
do anything you can’t do in your own code. But it supports arbitrary
attributes attached to enum instances, and subclassing of enums.

* Jump-table-based 'switch' (this requires those named consts or enums)

Does it do switched expressions? You can do those in Python.

* Built-in Support for C-style data types, including C-style structs and
homogeneous array types
* Built-in FFI for C-style APIs

Python provides this in the standard-library ctypes module. Remarkably
useful for making a wrapper around a C library to make it look like the
library was designed for use from Python. I have done a lot of wrappers
like this.

* Character constants: 'A' and 'ABCDEFGH' (Python needs 'ord("A")')

Python also has “\u” and “\U” for Unicode.

* Static local variables within functions

Not really necessary, with classes.

Do you have lexical binding?

* Built-in maths functions and constants like 'pi'

Complex arithmetic? <https://docs.python.org/3/library/cmath.html>

Hyperbolic functions? Gamma/log-gamma?
<https://docs.python.org/3/library/math.html>

There’s a reason why we don’t want to build all these into the core
language, since there are so many of them that are needed nowadays.

* Expression-based macros

Really only necessary if your language is not dynamic enough.

I notice no mention of coroutines or iterators. Those are quite useful
nowadays.