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From: dewar@merv.cs.nyu.edu (Robert Dewar)
Subject: Re: Warning: Religious naming convention discussion :-) [was: assign
 help!!]
Date: 1997/05/12
Message-ID: <dewar.863448507@merv>#1/1
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References: <5kjvcv$evt@news.cis.nctu.edu.tw> <3373EAB5.73A0@sprintmail.com>
 <33755EF7.1A8F@erols.com> <dewar.863365392@merv> <EA1I8o.HBD@world.std.com>
Organization: New York University
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-05-12T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


<<I disagree.  I think "pointer" means "thing that can point".  I don't
think it's a low-level machine-oriented concept at all.  I use the term
"address" or "machine address" for the low-level notion.  I would amend
your last sentence to say, "... there is nothing in the language that
suggests or requires that access types be implemented as machine
addresses."

Note that Pascal calls them "pointers", not "access types", and there is
nothing in Pascal that suggests or requires pointers to be implemented
as machine addresses.  This is even true of C, and there are in fact
implementations of C that implement "foo*" as something other than an
address -- for the purpose of doing bounds checking and whatnot, which
is very expensive in C, but nonetheless useful for debugging.>>

says Bob Duff, and I agree in theory, but in practice, say pointer to
most people, and then think of a machine address ... it is that
perception of connection that causes confusion.