3 ms·

I hate string processing. Is there any widely used programming language that does not support strings? I mean, you can do all of math, scientific computing, an

I hate string processing. Is there any widely used programming language that does not support strings? I mean, you can do all of math, scientific computing, and graphics without strings. Forcing your language to support strings will inevitably impose compromises that make the language worse when you do not need them. I want such a language, unencumbered by the intrinsic uglyness of strings.

tsimionescu 7y ago
well, C++ doesn't really have too much support for strings, except the "" syntax for constant ASCII strings. Everything else is library based, and lots of people apparently don't use std::string and friends. However, I can't really think of many programming languages where string and string processing affect the syntax or semantics of any other aspect of the language (there are TCL, Perl and most shell languages, but definitely not C, C++, Java, C#, any flavor of LISP, Haskell, *ML and most others) That said, I don't really think you can use a programming system that doesn't,support strings:at some point you have to communicate something to a human, and at that point you need text. And traditionally, math is one of the places where people invented all sorts of creative writing systems. Also, you have symbolic math where even the core of the solver needs at least some basic string support (e.g. Solve for x "x + c = 0" => solution is -c.
bryal 7y ago
Futhark has only the most basic string support -- string literal syntax, which which is just sugar for a utf-8 byte array. It's a functional array language that generates fast GPU code, and as a GPU program is essentially a pure function (no input/output), string handling is very much a secondary concern. Futhark is used exactly for math, scientific computing, and graphics, and not for strings.

3 ms·

I hate string processing. Is there any widely used programming language that does not support strings? I mean, you can do all of math, scientific computing, an

by enriquto 7y ago

tsimionescu 7y ago
well, C++ doesn't really have too much support for strings, except the "" syntax for constant ASCII strings. Everything else is library based, and lots of people apparently don't use std::string and friends. However, I can't really think of many programming languages where string and string processing affect the syntax or semantics of any other aspect of the language (there are TCL, Perl and most shell languages, but definitely not C, C++, Java, C#, any flavor of LISP, Haskell, *ML and most others) That said, I don't really think you can use a programming system that doesn't,support strings:at some point you have to communicate something to a human, and at that point you need text. And traditionally, math is one of the places where people invented all sorts of creative writing systems. Also, you have symbolic math where even the core of the solver needs at least some basic string support (e.g. Solve for x "x + c = 0" => solution is -c.
bryal 7y ago
Futhark has only the most basic string support -- string literal syntax, which which is just sugar for a utf-8 byte array. It's a functional array language that generates fast GPU code, and as a GPU program is essentially a pure function (no input/output), string handling is very much a secondary concern. Futhark is used exactly for math, scientific computing, and graphics, and not for strings.