I'm a little confused over when to use a var vs. a ref vs. an agent vs. an atom. For writing small (<200 lines) single-threaded programs when do I want to use each one?
Also, since you can use def to change a binding how do I know for sure that some function is not generating side-effects? I mean if it's my code I can be somewhat confident about what it's doing, but if it is a blackbox function how can I trust it? A very crude example would be something like: (defn square [n] (def x n) (def n 6) (* x x)) I've ran that in the repl and it doesn't change the values of what is passed to it, but is the same true for multithreaded apps? What if between (def n 6) and (* x x)) a different thread requested the value of n? Basically, I want to know when is immutability guaranteed? What is a form? In this overview of clojure, it talks about bindings and forms. The fragment that I am trying to understand is "The let special form creates bindings that are local to that form". http://java.ociweb.com/mark/clojure/article.html#Bindings Thanks in advance. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en