From: "David A. Black" <dblack@...>
Date: 2005-05-06T22:34:58+09:00
Subject: Re: object reference handle (like perl's reference to scalar)

Hi --

On Fri, 6 May 2005, Eric Mahurin wrote:

> This looks nice too.  I haven't looked at DelegateClass yet,
> but it looks kind of like what's in evil.rb/become
> (__set_obj__).  I would like to add this to my Object.ref which
> already does a variety of things.
>
> What you have is definitely different than my earlier thing:
>
> ref {:x}  # refers to the variable x
> x.ref     # refers to object in the variable x
>
> example:
>
> x = "hello"
> y = "world"
> z = x
> swap(ref{:x},ref{:y}) # swaps what x and y point to
> x                   -> "world"
> y                   -> "hello"
> z                   -> "hello"

This is uncomfortably (for me) close to all the symbolic reference
stuff one sees in Perl.  It seems similarly verbose and fragile.  I
don't think it's even looked upon very favorably in Perl circles.  In
any case I much prefer:

   x,y = y,x


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack@wobblini.net