At 7:45 PM -0500 11/20/00, David Gamey wrote:
>- is there a case to change the default behavior of list(n,x)
> and table(x) in unicon where x is a structure?
I would say no. It is rarely a good idea to break the world no
matter how sub-optimal the world currently is. The best bet is to
extend in a way that current software won't notice unless they are
using the extension.
On the subject of deep vs. shallow copying: I suspect that people
rarely want shallow copying, except when it happens to be the
degenerate case of deep ("infinite") copying. And things like
recursive data structures tend to be very rare indeed.
In the case of tables, something more like a deferred copy is more
desirable. What I mean by that is when you use the default value and
it happens to be a structure, I rather use a (deep) copy of that
structure. I would guess that 99% of the time that structure would
be an empty list/set/record/table.
Actually, if it were possible to change the default value of a table
(I once thought of a syntax for this, but it escapes me at the
moment), a lot of the pain would go away.
--
Nevin ":-)" Liber <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> (773) 861-2479
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