> Out of curiosity, how does the word > "assign" imply that it morphs an > existing value, and how does the word > "set" imply that it copies a pointer?
Well, I suppose "set" was chosen just because that seems to be the standard name for an operation that copies a pointer. Then "assign" was chosen just to be different from "set" :-) But they actually do make a bit of sense in my mind. "set P1 to P2" sounds like you're replacing P1 with P2. Which is what happens, since P1 and P2 are just pointers. "assign to P1 P2" This seems to imply that you're going to tell P1 that it's having P2 assigned to it. Like at work when you get an 'assignment'. They don't actually change you're value (hopefully), but just give you something to do. They 'assign' you a job. Boss: "Bob, I'm going to assign you a desk." Bob: "OK" Boss: "Bob, I'm going to set you to a desk." Bob: "What? You're replacing me witha desk?!" (Well, that's what I would say if I was Bob ;) YMMV) Bob would probably object to being morphed to a desk, as well. Actually I think "morph" is not quite as appropriate as "assign", as "morph" sounds like you're going to change the type of the thing, while "assign" seems to imply that the thing can do whatever it wants with the new value. if you assign an integer to a PerlString, it's still a PerlString. But if you morph a PerlString into an integer, it sounds like you're changing the PerlString itself into an integer. Also, 'assign' may be used (well I don't know, but this would make sense) on objects that represent variables. When you 'assign' the variable a value, you don't really change the variable, itself, as would be implied by "morph". <slight-subject-change> Personally, I would like "=" to mean 'set', and maybe "<-" do 'assign'. Probably because I'm used to thinking of PMC registers as pointers, and because the kind of languages that I'm used to (Java, Python, Ruby) all treat variables as pointers, so '=' just copies pointers. I think that people probably do more setting than assigning, anyway, so keeping the set operator short is good for that reason, too. "<-" even looks like 'put into', which is pretty much what you're doing when you say "P1 <- 3". Yeah. I like that :-D __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
