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From: doylep@eecg.toronto.edu (Patrick Doyle)
Subject: Re: Copying semantics molehill (was Re: True faiths)
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Date: 2002-01-28T18:47:38+00:00
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In article <5ee5b646.0201271908.38674a0d@posting.google.com>,
Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com> wrote:
>doylep@eecg.toronto.edu (Patrick Doyle) wrote in message news:<GqCG1x.nFH@ecf.utoronto.ca>...
>> I must be crazy.  I have never written a system where the semantics
>> of the "copy" operation mattered.  Mainly, this is for two reasons:
>> 
>> 1. A lot of my data is immutable, so the copying semantics are moot.
>> 
>> 2. Instead of copying an existing object, my usual idiom is to create a
>> new one from scratch.
>
>Not crazy, but unusual. You are saying that you do not
>do assignments of the form
>
>   a := b;
>
>where a and b are both objects and that you do not
>use IN OUT parameters.

No, actually I'm saying what I said.  ;-)

>It is certainly possible to write code with these constraints, but
>definitely unusual.

It is most certainly not unusual.  For instance, Java has neither
object-wise assignment nor in-out parameters.

Do you mean it's unusual in some particular language?

-- 
--
Patrick Doyle
doylep@eecg.toronto.edu