Re: Smart variables, dumb variables

[tomas]

On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 10:48:32PM +0200, Marius Vollmer wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
> 
> > On Wed, Aug 14, 2002 at 09:35:29PM +0200, Marius Vollmer wrote:
> >
> > > Read-onlyness should be a property of a variable that can be detected
> > > by the compiler so we wouldn't want to bury it only in the setter, I'd
> > > say.
> > 
> > For some kind of static integrity checking?
> 
> I had in mind that the compiler could use the bit to decide if it is
> allowed to inline some functions (such as '+', 'car', ...) but I no
> longer think that would be the right way.

It sure makes sense, but at another point (see also all the other
followups).  Those decisions are compile-time, and whether the
compiler gets its info from promises the user makes (kind of
type declarations) or from static code analysis -- it'd have
to have a richer per-variable data structure than just those two
bits.

The two bits you have envisioned seem to me a run-time thing (maybe
something the compiler might set after reaching its conclusions).

Regards
-- tomas