[REBOL] Re: probe/dump-binary survey
From: greggirwin:mindspring at: 3-May-2004 3:54
Hi Max,
MOA> especially since we often insert a probe within a line to get
MOA> status at that moment, like just before an assignment... dump-bin
MOA> would break that behaviour.
It shouldn't, unless I'm missing something. What it displays and what
it returns are two different things.
MOA> that would make probe a little obsure ... probe is meant to show
MOA> what the code is ... internally.
This is interesting. I've always thought of PROBE as "show me the
value" where the inlining aspect was the big benefit, but that it
didn't add as much as it could for certain types of values (e.g.
binary! and bitset!). That is, I thought in terms of "show me the
value in a way that is most informative to me." A molded object spec
is just that, as are many values they way they are returned. A date!
displayed as fields/values for each possible refinement would be more
verbose and less useful than a plain molded date.
MOA> If you want to make a datatype based format print or probe, then
MOA> user should just implement this:
MOA> dprobe: func [data][...
I would probably call that one DUMP. :) Having a single wrapper for
all datatypes would be a good thing in any case, and I think we also
need to have a way to see the values as PROBE returns them today
(inlining it can be a big benefit after all).
What about a refinement on PROBE that makes it produce DUMPed output?
-- Gregg
