automagic "self"

[Andrew Whitworth]

The "self" variable in PIR is extremely magic. If you mark the .sub
with the :method flag, IMCC will automatically add a parameter to the
front of the list of parameters called "self". IF you do not use the
:method flag, but use the "self" variable in a .sub without declaring
it first, IMCC will also helpfully automatically and invisibly insert
"self" at the front of the list of parameters.

I would like to end this behavior. At the PIR level, I think that
"self" should have to be manually specified with a ".param"
declaration or equivalent. At the NQP and Winxed level, of course,
user-visible behavior does not need to change. Any languages using a
custom parameter binding (e.g. Rakudo) would also likely remain
completely unmodified.

Assuming there are no major complaints, I would like to start a branch
to work on this issue soon. The first step would be to add behavior to
IMCC that if the first .param is named "self" we don't automatically
prepend another self variable to the front of the list. As an example,
currently this throws a runtime error about not having enough
parameters passed, but does not throw a compile-time error about a
"self" parameter being defined twice:

.sub foo :method
.param pmc self
say self
.end

The second step of the switch would be to remove automatic "self"
magic and fix whatever errors pop up from that.

This is a nit that we've discussed in the past, and decided previously
that it wasn't worth the energy to fix. However, now this is standing
in the way of some real improvements to PCC and IMCC and I would like
to work on dealing with it now.

I would love to hear what other people think. Thanks.

--Andrew Whitworth
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[Jonathan "Duke" Leto]

+1 to demagicification of self params

--
Jonathan "Duke" Leto <jona...@leto.net>
Leto Labs LLC
209.691.DUKE // http://labs.leto.net
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