On 22 July 2013 15:11, Lionel Cons <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 22 July 2013 14:15, Dan Douglas <[email protected]> wrote:
>> On Monday, July 22, 2013 01:28:21 PM Cedric Blancher wrote:
>>> Forwarding the proposal. Wendy's idea to use varname.__ as name to
>>> reference a compound/type variable's parent is IMO *great*.
>>
>> In the general case of compounds it's fine. In the case of objects created
>> from user-defined types, it's far better and customary to have a reference to
>> the object, and then refer to sub-variables relative to that (from the 
>> outside
>> in, not from the inside working out.).
>
> I think it still has merit for both cases. But IMO it should help with
> the major issue that building large trees inside a compound variable
> where a single compound variable at the base contains a compound
> variable array, which itself harbours many more nesting levels of
> compound variables.
>
> The current performance of such a construct SUCKS compared to java or
> python (or compared to a real Unix filesystem), regardless of the
> cache David has implemented, because constructing and using such a
> tree always requires the absolute variable name.
> Using the Wendy/Cedric proposal of nameref parent=varname.__ to
> reference the parent compound or type variable is a very good way to
> (finally) introduce relative variable names top build and access
> variable trees.

I like that idea too. It's in the spirit of Unix and removes the need
to remember the full name of the variable each time we navigate around
in a variable tree.

David, how hard would it be to implement a varname.__ prototype for
the next alpha release?
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