Andrew Hunt wrote:
> 
>         >Shall I write and bundle extension, say BitVector?
>         >It is fairly easy using Bignum structure, once specification is
>         >defined.
>         >
>         >                                                       matz.
> 
> Well, if you don't have anything else to do today :-)
> 
> Actually, that brings up a good point.  Do we have any sort
> of official "wish list" of features that people want added
> to the language?  As I said in an earlier post, I think a
> solid CORBA binding would be a very nice addition, but probably
> entails more than an hour's work...
> 

Hmm, well what about;

assert/invariant/pre|post conditions that can be turned off at a
compilation level whilst being left in the code? Or possibly more
useful, being able to tag things that should not normally be compiled
but can be turned on (debugging code anyone?) This is one big thing that
I would have loved to have been included into Java, at the moment if I
want to get rid of my debug code and not have the overhead of doing
millions of checks for flags I have to run it through a pre-processor,
not the best solution.

On the subject of a CORBA binding, I have at the moment a Perl ORB that
I may or may not bring up to full CORBA compliance (I'm working from the
2.3 spec but the wire level protocol is not GIOP/IIOP) and if people are
interested (and I can convince my company) then I would be willing to
discuss porting it all to Ruby. Even if I can't do anything about
bringing code in then I would be interested to be on the project if it
does get going.

Another note about CORBA. I'm not sure what you mean exactly by a
'bundle' but if it means that you cannot override things in the bundle
then don't do it. I am also doing work on a Java ORB (same deal as Perl)
and trying to get things to work with the CORBA classes that Sun bundled
with JDK 1.2 is a nightmare, especially when Sun have included classes
that are not CORBA compliant themselves AND cannot be removed from the
runtime libraries because of their redistribution license agreement.

Cheers,

  Nige

-- 
Nigel Rantor
e-mail - wormboyslim / wiggly.org

There is always an easier way to do it.
                       - Wise Words From The Worm