On Sat, 9 Apr 2011 20:39:00 -0400, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote:
>In <[email protected]>, on
>04/06/2011
> at 07:00 AM, "Sambataro, Anthony (NIH/CIT) [E]" said:
>
>>stem. = 0
>>stem.0 = 10
>
>>Will create a stem variable of 10 elements all with a value of
>>zero.
>
>Not even close. The second will create a compound variable stem.0 and
>the first will cause the default value of any other compound variable
>to be 0. Neither will effect the value of any existing variable with
>stem stem. and neither has any effect on how many compound variables
>you can create with that stem. ...
>
I may misunderstand; if not I disagree strongly with the sentence,
"Neither will effect the value of any existing variable with stem
stem."
"effect"?
Rather:
The first will cause the value of all compound variables beginning
with "stem." to be 0, regardless of prior assignment to any of
them.
The word "default" is otiose and misleading. It leads novices to
believe incorrectly either tnat it does not affect variables to
which a previous assignment was made, or that on dropping a compound
variable it reverts (by "default") to the value earlier assigned to
"stem.".
Expanding on an RCF to the TSO Rexx Reference that I submitted,
motivated by the misunderstandings in this thread:
hole.mouse = "cheese"
hole. = "empty"
hole.9 = "full"
egg = "Scrambled"
drop hole.egg
say hole.1 hole.mouse hole.9 hole.egg
/* says "empty empty full HOLE.Scrambled" */
I have tested this only lacking the first assignment. But I'm
highly confident.
-- gil
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