In article <7g72rf$hjh3@ftp.kvaerner.com>,
  "Tarjei Tj�stheim Jensen" <tarjei.jensen@kvaerner.no> wrote:
>
> Robert Dewar wrote :
> >
> >In other words:
> >
> >  a(5)
> >
> >is a reference to a mapping, and you want the range value
> >given the domain value 5. Whether this is implemented by
> >an array or a function is an implementation detail that
> >should not affect the syntactic form of reference.
>
> What would a(5) := 4; mean then? You cannot assign to a function as far as I
> know. Which in my opinion voids the function opposition to the common
> convention of using square brackets for array indices.

A mapping is typically static, and would thus be represented by a *constant*
array. Assigning to that is illegal as well.

I have actually had this come in handy. I had a data structure that was a
mapping implemented as a constant array that was used by about 10 other s/w
engineers. Things got complicated and I had to reimplement it as a function.
None of them had to change a line of code.


--
T.E.D.

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