I follow Partcl becouse I am a Tcl user. It is being rewriting in NQP. The Pir version could pass 4089/7397 test from the official test suit. It a lot slower that the official version.

All languages on Parrot compile down to a common denominator, Parrot's assembly language (PIR), either dynamically at run time or before execution. It has an object system and common function call conventions, this means that as long as a language supports calling functions and a compatible object system (or some wrappers around it) it can call any function and use any object as other languages running on the VM. Arc doesn't have an object system, so some wrapper would be needed. To get seamless interoperability the language implementation should define a mapping between the language's primitive types and the corresponding Parrot's types. Primitivearc currently lacks the wrappers around the object system to interoperate with object oriented libraries (adding them wouldn't be a huge task I think), but it can already call any function loaded into the VM. To call a Perl 6 function (this doesn't work because 'load assumes an Arc file but it could be easily modified to call the correct compiler, since the mechanism is already present in Parrot):

  file foo.p6:
    sub foo(%tb) {
      return %tb{"bar"};
    }

  Arc REPL:
    > (load "foo.p6")
    #<function>
    > (foo (listtab '((bar "Baz!"))))
    "Baz!"

  (flet (f (x) (expr x))
    whatever...)

  (fwith ((f (x) (expr x))
          (g (x) (f x)))
    whatever...)

1. The time scale. I don't want to make what people think they want right now. Following that recipe earlier would have got me Perl, which lost its lead to the language I would have gotten a little later, Python, which lost its lead to the language I would have gotten a little later, Ruby, which... See the pattern?

  (mac w/url (var url . body)
    `(let ,var (cadr (get-request (str->url ,url)))
       ,@body)))

I'm not familiar with how to use xml.arc but this is what I came up with for finding the links on a page:

  (def find-links (str)
    (with (start 0 acc nil)
      (whilet p (posmatch " href=" str start)
        (= start
           (+ p (if (in (str (+ p 6)) #\' #\") 7 6)))
      (push (cut str start (pos [in _ #\' #\" #\> #\space] str start))
            acc))
      (rev acc)))

  (w/url u "http://www.google.com/"
    (find-links u))

  (def beer (x)
    (with (y t z x)
      (while (is y t)
        (do 
          (prn (if (is x 0) "No more" x) 
               " bottle" ; *** here the error
               (if (is x 1) "" "s")
               " of beer on the wall, " 
               (if (is x 0) "no more" x)
               " bottle" 
              (if (is x 1) "" "s") 
              " of beer!")
          (if (is x 0) 
           (do 
             (prn "Go to the store and buy some more, "
                  z " bottle" (if (is z 1) "" "s")
                  " of beer on the wall!")
             (= y nil))
           (prn "You take one down, pass it around, " 
                (if (is (- x 1) 0) "no more" (- x 1)) 
                " bottle" (if (is (- x 1) 1) "" "s") 
                " of beer on the wall!"))
          (prn) 
          (= x (- x 1))))))

I found a site that lists "99 bottles" programs in 1000 languages, but they don't correct for proper grammar and they don't accept inputs that aren't 99. One guy wrote a shorter 99 bottles program in Arc but it used more high-level functions than mine did.

It is an esoteric language, designed to have the shortest programs for "Hello, World!" "99 bottles of beer" and quines.

http://99-bottles-of-beer.net/language-hq9+-1334.html

So while anarki might need to support arrays internally for efficiency, they need not neccesarily be part of the language as far as the users can tell.

If the above is true, then right now the implementation of things that are efficient for the language when it wants to communicate with the cpu are of a lower priority than the things that are efficient for the communication between the user and the language.

In Arc-F for example I might use:

  (using <vector>v2) ; vector and vector-of

  (def make-world (xwidth yheight)
    (apply vector
           (w/collect:for i 0 (- xwidth)
             (collect:vector-of yheight nil))))

  ; create a location type
  (def location (world x y)
    (annotate 'location
      (list world x y)))

  (defcall location (r)
    (let (world x y) r
      (world.x y)))

  (defm sref ((t loc location) val)
    (let (world x y) (rep loc)
      (sref world.x val y)))

  ; 0---> INF
  ; |
  ; |
  ; v
  ; INF
  (def south (loc (o step 1))
    (err "'north and 'south expect a location"))
  (defm south ((t loc location) (o step 1))
    (let (world x y) (rep loc)
      (location world x (+ y step))))

  (def north (loc (o step 1))
    (south loc (- step)))

  (def east (loc (o step 1))
    (err "'east and 'west expect a location"))
  (defm east ((t loc location) (o step 1))
    (let (world x y) (rep loc)
      (location world (+ x step) y)))

  (def west (loc (o step 1))
    (east loc (- step)))

I should put some more work into it. The good news is that I just found a nice and simple editor that plays well with arc-f on windows (LispIDE - http://www.daansystems.com/lispide/)

btw. arc-f arc.bat doesn't play nice yet with "Program Files" type of directories. Works fine in C:\arc-f.

Got this error:

Of course, of course ^^

> btw. arc-f arc.bat doesn't play nice yet with "Program Files" type of directories.

However recently I thought of a method by which all that is necessary would be a (probably tagged) pointer to the actual entry within the array. This would require tagged pointers (i.e. no Boehm-Weiser!).

Basically we would define a tagged pointer type which, when found in a list-as-array, would not be a valid 'car of that entry, but rather would be a pointer to an object containing the real 'car and 'cdr for that object. It might be possible to also use a tagged pointer (potentially the same tag, but say with a null pointer) to denote the end of a list.

Let's call this invalid tag a "NON_CAR_TAG", and let's call the tag for a pointer to an array-as-list-cons-cell a "CONS_ARRAY"

Basically a (list 1 2 3 4) would be represented with the array:

  [0] INTEGER(1) // tagged with an INTEGER
  [1] INTEGER(2)
  [2] INTEGER(3)
  [3] INTEGER(4)
  [4] NON_CAR_TAG( NULL ) // null pointer

Now suppose we have the operation (= foo (list 1 2 3 4)). 'foo would then contain a CONS_ARRAY() tagged pointer to the above. Suppose the pointer to the above array is 0xDEADBEE0. 'foo would then be CONS_ARRAY(0xDEADBEE0).

Now suppose that a cell is exactly 16 bytes (just an example for easier reasoning). So (cdr foo) would be CONS_ARRAY(0xDEADBEF0), (cdr:cdr foo) would be CONS_ARRAY(0xDEADBF00), etc. Basically, 'cdr would first check if the input is a CONS_ARRAY() tagged pointer, and just add 0x10 (or the cell size). If the resulting address points to an entry that happens to be NON_CAR_TAG(NULL), it should return a NILOBJ, otherwise it returns the result of the addition.

Now, suppose we then do (scdr (cdr foo) 42). 'scdr should first detect if the the pointer it is given is a CONS_ARRAY() tagged pointer. If so, it determines if the value being pointed to is a NON_CAR_TAG() or not. If it's a NON_CAR_TAG(), it gets the underlying cons cell pointed to by the NON_CAR_TAG and modifies that. Otherwise, it allocates a new cons cell, populates it with the existing 'car and the new 'cdr, tags the cons cell pointer with NON_CAR_TAG(), and replaces the entry:

                   +---------> CONS: A INTEGER(2)
  [0] INTEGER(1)   |                 D INTEGER(42)
  [1] NON_CAR_TAG( * )
  [2] INTEGER(3)
  [3] INTEGER(4)
  [4] NON_CAR_TAG(NULL)