[ruby-talk:4925] Perl 6 rumblings -- RFC 225 (v1) Data: Superpositions

Hi,

FYI/FWIW.

> This and other RFCs are available on the web at
>   http://dev.perl.org/rfc/
>
> =head1 TITLE
>
> Data: Superpositions
>
> =head1 VERSION
>
>   Maintainer: Damian Conway <[e-mail]>
>   Date: 14 September 2000
>   Mailing List: [e-mail]
>   Number: 225
>   Version: 1
>   Status: Developing
>
> =head1 ABSTRACT
>
> This RFC (seriously) proposes Perl 6 provide C<any> and C<all>
operators,
> and, thereby, conjunctive and disjunctive superpositional types.
>
> =head1 DESCRIPTION
>
> The advantages and possibilities of superpositional programming were
> demonstrated in well-received presentations at both YAPC'19100 and TPC
4.0.
>
> It is proposed that the C<any>, C<all>, and C<eigenstates> operators
> proposed in those talks be added to Perl 6. Adding them to the core is
> suggested because the use of superpositions changes the nature of
> subroutine and operator invocations that have superpositions as
> arguments. This is currently impossible to reproduce in a module.
> Furthermore, the fundamental utility of being able to write:
>
>         if (any(@value) < 10) { ... }
>
> or:
>
>         die unless all(@tests)->($data);
>
> ought to be available to all Perl users.
>
> Inclusion in the core would also allow the current module-based pure
Perl
> implementation to be greatly optimized (perhaps even parallelized on
suitable
> SIMD or other multiprocessing platforms).
>
> A paper proposing the full semantics of superpositions (including their
> effect when used as subroutine arguments and operator operands) will
soon
> be available from:
>
>         http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/#Superpositions
>
>
> =head1 MIGRATION ISSUES
>
> The <any> and <all> functions may collide with existing user-defined
> or module-exported subroutine names.
>
>
> =head1 IMPLEMENTATION
>
> See the Quantum::Superpositions module.
>
>
> =head1 REFERENCES
>
>  [1] Bohr, N., On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules, Philosophical
>      Magazine, s.6, v.24, pp.1-25, 1913.
>
>  [2] Einstein, A., ?ber einen die Erzeugung und Verwandlung des Lichtes
>      betreffenden heuristischen Gesichtspunkt ("On a Heuristic Viewpoint
>      Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light"), Annalen
>      der Physik, v.17, p.132-148, 1905.
>
>  [3] Lewis, G.N., The Conservation of Photons, Nature, v.118(2),
>      pp.874-875, 1926.
>
>  [4] Monroe, C., Meekhof, D.M., King, B.E., Itano, W.M. & Wineland, D.J.
>      Demonstration of a Fundamental Quantum Logic Gate, Phys. Rev. Lett.
>      v.75, pp.4714-4717, 1995.
>
>  [7] Cirac, J.I. & Zoller P., Quantum Computations with Cold Trapped
>      Ions, Phys. Rev. Lett. v.74, pp.4091-4096, 1995.
>
>  [8] Gershenfeld, N. & Chuang, I. L. Bulk Spin-resonance Quantum
>      Computation, Science v.275, pp.350-356, 1997.
>
>  [9] Cory, D.G., Fahmy, A.F. & Havel, T.F., Ensemble Quantum
>      Computing by NMR Spectroscopy, Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 94,
>      pp.1634-1639, 1997.
>
> [10] Deutsch, D. Quantum Theory, the Church-Turing Principle and the
>      Universal Quantum Computer, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., v.A400,
>      pp.97-117, 1985.
>
> [11] Deutsch, D. & Jozsa, R., Rapid Solution of Problems by Quantum
>      Computation, Proc. R. Soc. Lond., v.A439, pp. 553-558, 1992.
>
> [12] Shor, P. Algorithms for Quantum Computation: Discrete Logarithms
>      and Factoring, Proc. 35th Symp. on Found'ns of Computer Science,
>      pp. 124-134, 1994.
>
> [13] Grover, L.K., A Fast Quantum Mechanical Algorithm for Database
>      Search, Proc. 28'th ACM Symp. on the Theory of Computing, pp.
>      212-219, 1996.
>
> [14] Wallace, J., Quantum Computer Simulators - A Review, Technical
>      Report 387, School of Engineering and Computer Science, University
>      of Exeter, June 1999.

--
Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)