in reply to PV limits on 64-bit perls?

One thing is the length of the name of a Perl variable (how many characters in that name). I've worked with languages with limits like 5 or 6 chars or stuff like you "can use 32 chars, but only first 8 are available to the linker". As far as I know, the number of characters in a Perl $var name is so huge that in a practical sense it won't be reached.

How many bytes can be assigned to a $var is a different thing. As ikegami points out. But then again we get to the practical matter of how many chars(bytes) make sense to assign to a single Perl variable? I would argue that once this gets past a couple of billion (or even just a 100 million), the algorithm is suspect.

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Re^2: PV limits on 64-bit perls?
by BrowserUk (Patriarch) on Sep 23, 2009 at 03:04 UTC

    Suffice to say, this has nothing to do with the length of variable names; and there is nothing "suspect" about using memory-mapped virtual address space.

    Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
    "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
    In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
      Ok missed your point about length of variable names. I didn't get that from original question (just went past PV).

      This appears to have a LOT to do about memory-mapped virtual address space. If you create a structure that cannot fit into memory at once, the performance penalty can be awesome depending upon how localized the access is to this structure.

[reply]

        Read this. Particularly the first para in the section entitled: "What Do Memory-Mapped Files Have to Offer?"

        Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
        "Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
        In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.
[reply]
        In 1989 one might have said the same thing about keeping a data structure of 8 Mbytes in memory. In another 20 years from now, 8 Gbytes may be the average size of a hologram on your camera.

        Ideally, scalars should just hold whatever you throw at them, no questions asked :-)

        -- Time flies when you don't know what you're doing
[reply]

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