Andreas Rossberg wrote: > Marshall wrote: > > > > After all, what are the alternatives? Purely-functional > > languages remove themselves from a large class of > > problems that I consider important: data management. > > Maybe, but I have yet to see how second-class variables are really more > adequate in dealing with it. > > And note that even with second-class state you can still have aliasing > issues - you just need mutable arrays and pass around indices. Keys in > databases are a more general form of the same problem.
So for array a, you would claim that "a[5]" is an alias for (a part of) "a"? That seems to stretch the idea of aliasing to me. With these two expressions, it is obvious enough what is going on; with two arbitrary pointers, it is not. It seems to me the source of the problem is the opacity of pointers, but perhaps I am missing something. > > I have explored the OO path to its bitter end and am > > convinced it is not the way. So what is left? Uniqueness > > types and logic programming, I suppose. I enjoy logic > > programming but it doesn't seem quite right. But notice: > > no pointers there! And it doesn't seem to suffer from the > > lack. > > Uh, aliasing all over the place! Actually, I think that logic > programming, usually based on deep unification, brings by far the worst > incarnation of aliasing issues to the table. Hmmm. Can you elaborate just a bit? Marshall -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
