Re: JESS: Strings vs. Symbols [tally so far]

[Michael Smith]

If the elimination of confusion and consistency with Java is the goal, why not just eliminate the SYMBOL type from Jess?  There is no java.util.Symbol after all :) OK, just mark me down as one vote for leaving STRING and SYMBOL atoms as separate and unequal. As a limit to the bound on a worst case -- perhaps the compromise could be to have a switchable property as in "(set-string-and-symbols-equal true)" or some such.  Unfortunately, true would have to be default to avoid the newbie problems; finding and understanding the switch and knowing the distinction between SYMBOL and STRING are probably in the same ball park of effort..  This would perhaps mildly annoy those who count on the distinction "out of the box". - Mike On Mar 10, 2006, at 6:23 PM, James C. Owen wrote: OK, just to break the tie:  An atom can be variable, a String is an atom.  I agree that ?foo is not the same thing as "foo" and is not the same as foo and never should be.  JRules, at one time, used the "?" identifier in ?foo for variable identification and eventually dropped it.  However, to be compatible with CLIPS, perhaps it should stay.  Once you get used to it, it's like an itchy place - even when the itch is gone you still scratch just out of old habits.  :-)