Re: Language design question

hannah@mamba.pond.sub.org (Hannah Schroeter) writes:


> But it doesn't have to be a pain in the neck. Just consider ML for
> contrast. As it's a (mostly) functional language, it has pure values
> (no mutation, thus no dereferences needed) and variables (called
> references in ML) which are initialized on creation (val ref : 'a ->
> 'a ref) and are retrieved with an explicit dereference operator (val
> (!) : 'a ref -> 'a) and written with a special assignment operator
> (val (:=) : 'a ref -> 'a -> unit). As you use references only when you
> need imperative mutation, the program is usually not very cluttered
> with dereferences/assignments.


More importantly, ML's type checking ensures that you don't
accidentally put in one too many or one too few dereferences. The
problem with Bliss is that there's no type checking.


- Bob

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