I'm exploring whether or not the implementation of Perl would become simpler if there was one datatype used to represent the things we see as strings, lists, and hashes.

Constant speedups are one thing, but if you have a bad algorithm (like blindly searching a list to implement an associative array), the problem will scale poorly no matter how fast your computer is. The only way a futuristic computer running a linear-time algorithm could keep up with another computer running a constant-time algorithm would be if it could somehow compress time.

If I had to choose between a fast computer and fast algorithms, I'd choose fast algorithms ;)

You'd have a better chance of convincing me that this is a good idea if the implementation stays efficient and the everything-is-a-list is just a unifying interface to whatever the underlying structure is. Although I still don't see what this does that LISP doesn't already do.

Constant speedups are one thing, but if you have a bad algorithm (like blindly searching a list to implement an associative array), the problem will scale poorly no matter how fast your computer is. The only way a futuristic computer running a linear-time algorithm could keep up with another computer running a constant-time algorithm would be if it could somehow compress time.

The good thing about these types of mental exercises is that it helps expose our shared set of (mostly hidden) assumptions. For example, we like to think that we can do array lookup (and by extension, hash lookup) in O(1) time. Geometrically though, RAM is really a tree structure, and we have wait for signals to propogate through O(log n) row and column decoders. But even this is optimistic, because if bits take up a finite volume (and the speed of light is constant), then we're really looking at O(n**(1/3)) time for a lookup.

because if bits take up a finite volume (and the speed of light is constant),

I really can't tell if you're trying to mock the value of the kinds of theoretical claims I made, or you really think that the mass & volume of photons are a significant factor in algorithmic analysis.

You are right that there are a lot of factors when dealing with physical machines instead of theoretical ones. But on my computer, the amount of pyhsical RAM does not depend on the input size to algorithms I'm running. And in my exercise, we are fixing two computers & two competing algorithms, and varying only the input sizes to these algorithms. So I prefer to treat memory lookup time as a constant.

The point of my previous reply is that if I upgrade computers, then memory access time, CPU cycle time, etc, are each smaller constants, but still constants. Eventually, as the input sizes increase, the algorithm with the best asymptotic performance will win. And in the case of a reasonable O(1) or even O(log n) algorithm (where "reasonable" means the constants are not insanely large) on a slow machine vs a reasonable O(n) algorithm on a fast machine, the better algorithm starts winning perhaps sooner that you'd expect.

blokhead

It's kind of funny, because my feelings are the opposite of what blokhead describes in the last paragraph of Re^3: Representing all data as Lists; I'd actually be more inclined to support unifying the internals than changing the interface, though I don't really think either is a very good idea.

Like I said (or maybe I should have said more clearly) in my original reply, I think different things should look different. You may say the corollary is that alike things should like similar -- and I'd agree -- but in this case I dont' think a string and a list are things that are really all that alike. I can understand why someone would say they are, but I think it's a contrived likeness.

I strongly agree with Perl's current notion that a string is an individual thing (i.e. a scalar). I don't often have the need to break that thing apart and operate on its individual characters (Update: a clarification of what I meant). Perhaps that's a learned trait, but I tend to think it's more likely that instinctively seeing a string as a list is less natural.

In the case of hashes, I don't feel as strongly as I do about strings. Hashes are very list-like already, and as you pointed out, you can already coerce a list into a hash. That's a pretty natural-feeling thing, in my eyes. I still think a hash is different enough from a plain list that it deserves its own syntax and sigil, though. And Perl 6 will make it pretty easy to get a list of pairs, or a list of interwoven keys/values:

my %hash = <one 1 two 2 three 3>;

say $_.join(" ") for %hash.pairs;

# output:
#   one 1
#   three 3
#   two 2

say for %hash.kv;

# output:
#   one
#   1
#   three
#   3
#   two
#   2
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I strongly agree with Perl's current notion that a string is an individual thing (i.e. a scalar). I don't often have the need to break that thing apart and operate on its individual characters.

I think most Perl programmers would disagree with that notion. Especially since Perl is one of the few languages which has elevated fold/spindle/mutilate of strings into a language construct. Of course I'm talking about Perl's pattern matching facility (A.K.A. regex, but they're really not regular in the theoretical sense).

I think you misunderstood me. I could have said what I meant more clearly. I was trying to say that Perl programmers have a lot of ways to slice and dice text, and operating on strings as a bag of characters is one of the ways I use probably least often. Your mention of regular expressions really bolsters the point I was trying to make.