Re: kawa 1.14: java.io.PrintWriter prints everything as "true"

[Per Bothner <per at bothner dot com>]

On 10/08/2013 10:56 PM, Per Bothner wrote:
> The bug war introduced 2013-06-02 when fixing Savannah bug #39047
> "Wrong incompatible type (boolean) with expected int".
> Specifically the changes in the compare method in LangPrimType.java.
> "Fixing" that method fixes your bug, but causes other issues
> I'm looking at.
>
> The underlying issue is that Scheme allows any value to
> used as a boolean.  Kawa generalizes this so that any value
> can be converted to boolean - which then leads to some
> awkwardness with overload resolution: Which is the
> "more specific method" of:
>
> PrintWriter#println(boolean)
> PrintWriter#println(Object)
>
> They are equally general, in that any value can be converted to boolean,
> and any value can be converted to Object.  I think we have this ok
> when it comes to compile-time method selection (bug #39047 was partly
> about fixing this), but it may be harder to get it right for run-time
> method selection.  However, I will keep looking at the problem.

I have one idea for how to handle boolean in overloading. but it's
not a small change, so I need to let the idea simmer some more.
Furthermore,   I'm working on a big change involving pattern-matching,
tweaks to the way unknown functions get called, and parameter passing.
The current issue is related to this bigger change, so I think it is
best to focus on the bigger issue first.

To remind me to not forget about this issue I created a
bug report on Savannah:
https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/index.php?40253
--
	--Per Bothner
per@bothner.com   http://per.bothner.com/