[rdnzl-devel] Rdnzl Problem

[Iver Odin Kvello]

>  Maybe you'd like to write a paragraph or two about generic types that we can add to the documentation?  (ASCII text is
>  fine, doesn't have to be HTML.)

So I've tried writing some documentation for this now finally, here goes:

=== CUT HERE ====

Generic types in RDNZL

 In summary, refer to a generic type with type-arguments filled with
 a list of type-names like

    ("System.Collections.Generic.List" "System.Int32")

Motivation

 The name of a generic type, when 'closed' with type arguments so it is
 instantiable, is of the form

     "Basetype´arity[ParameterType1,...,ParameterTypeN]"

 and type names of  this form can in general be used in all contexts
 like the argument to 'NEW' and so forth. However, for this type to be
 found, all the parameter types must either lie in the same assembly
 as the base type or their names must be assembly-qualified.
 Furthermore, the full 'path' to each type would have to be specified
 even if their namespaced had been imported with USE-NAMESPACE
 making this a bit unpractical.

 To solve this, all arguments that accept a string as a typename will
 also accept a list of typenames (including sublists for when
 type-arguments are themselves generic types) where these lists
 represent generic types with their parameters. Also, since the length
 of the list is enough to determine the arity of the type, the
 "´arity"-part of the type-name can be dropped. Each type-name element
 of the list will have its name resolved in the imported namespaces.

 The upshot is that for one can instantiate the type with full name

 System.Func`2[[System.Int32, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0,
 Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089],[System.Int32,
 mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral,
 PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089]], System.Core, Version=3.5.0.0,
 Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089

 using

  (import-assembly "mscorlib")        ;; Int32 lives here
  (import-assembly "System.Core")     ;; Func (of diverse arities) lives here
  (use-namespace "System")
  (new '("Func" "Int32" "Int32") #'1+)