primitive vector types (permutation syntax)

[Don]

Mattias Holm wrote:
> I think that the following would work reasonably well:
> 
>     allow the [] operator for arrays to take comma separated lists of 
> indices.

I've always believed that we need that syntax for multi-dimensional 
arrays. Swizzling ought to be possible on a multi-dimensional array, and 
I don't think it would be, with your proposal?

> 
> So the OpenCL like statement:
> 
>     v.xyzw = v2.wzyx;
> 
> will be written as:
> 
>     v[0,1,2,3] = v2[3,2,1,0];
> 
> Would this be ok? This is a general extension of the array slicing, and 
> it might be possible to permute with a combination of slices and indices 
> like this (i.e. v[0..3, 6, 5, 7.. len]). Is permutation operations 
> something that Walter would be willing to add?
> 
> As said by someone else in this thread, there need to be a way to 
> specify that static arrays are passed by value, so can the ref keyword 
> be paired with the oposite "byval" or something similar.
> 
> And also, functions need to be able to return static arrays which is not 
> possible at the moment.
> 
> Note that the support should be general and work with any array type (so 
> that you can get YMM support whenever that makes it into the future chips).
> 
> 
> / Mattias
>