As the afore mentioned newbie I could not be expected to understand the ramifications of all of this... but I recognise the debate as assuming Jess is an island and we all live on it.. Just as an avenue of inquiry that has not surfaced, "Will it affect inter-application usage? " are there users that iteract with Jess using other applications for which the string /symbol issue is important? Does this only apply to CLIPS itself, which reads the clp file in which the conflict can be expressed? I cant think of why anyone might want to wedge into the action with other applications, but you may know of some. ==============Original message text=============== On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 10:28:39 +1000 "Michael Smith" wrote:
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. :-) ===========End of original message text=========== -------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, send the words 'unsubscribe jess-users [EMAIL PROTECTED]' in the BODY of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED], NOT to the list (use your own address!) List problems? Notify [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------
