Ptolemy Type System Changes

Tom Lane (Structured Software Systems) has redesigned the type resolution system in Ptolemy, fixing a number of anomalies. The key changes are that types propagate forwards through arcs rather than backwards, that groups of multiple portholes are no longer constrained to have the same data type, and that higher-order functions in the HOF domain are evaluated in a new pre-initialization phase of execution. This solves a number of problems:

When a fork delivers particles to inputs of different types, the type conversion will occur at the receiving end not the sending end, because the plasma or buffer will be of the sender's type. This prevents doing coercion that may be appropriate for only some of the recipients.

Input ANYTYPE multiportholes can accept particles of different types from different sources. This is an essential capability for polymorphic stars like Printer.

In a star like Merge, the constraint that output type = input type will still constrain the input multiporthole members individually. Thus, the DE Merge will still require that all input types be the same, as it should.

Rewiring the schematic before porthole type assignment fixes all the type-assignment problems with HOF stars. In particular, HOFNop will not improperly constrain types, and we can get rid of the type-specific variants of HOFSrc.

Last updated: 10/09/05, cxh at eecs