Hi,
There is currently a class of error that OpenAxiom (and all other
AXIOM flavors) produces: a semantic error when an attempt is made to
declare a variable or a local function of the same name as a
record/union field name or a flag type name.
If I consider only at the current implementation of the compiler, I
can understand why the error is made: most of the time, we try to
infer the type of a symbol but it is not clear which of the two
possible conflicting type should be inferred as _the_ type of a symbol
that is both a literal and a variable.
However, when I look at the affected code, e.g. in
ModularDistinctDegreeFactorizer for example where the compiler
produces
Semantic Errors:
[1] ddfactor: degree is BOTH a variable and a literal
[2] ddfact: degree is BOTH a variable and a literal
[3] ddFact: degree is BOTH a variable and a literal
[4] sepfact: degree is BOTH a variable and a literal
[5] separateFactors: degree is BOTH a variable and a literal
[6] sepFact1: degree is BOTH a variable and a literal
it looks `unambiguous' to me what the right symbol should should to in
each context. Indeed, the compiler seems to eventually resolve to the
right symbol. Consequently, there must be a specification (e.g. an
algorithm) that systematically work without producing the above
diagnostics. In my view, the context should help decide which
interpretation of a symbol is desired, but that is not so simple
because when faced with
print pol.degree
it is not always immediately clear whether '.degree' refers to a
real function or a field of record.
For the moment, I'm going to downgrade the above diagnostic to
`warning'. And I would appreciate to know what people think.
-- Gaby
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