From: Daniel Nugent <nugend@...>
Date: 2005-10-30T01:25:09+09:00
Subject: Re: What would it take to change the behaviour of variable assignment?

It's not about the syntax, well, it is, sorta, but it's not about
what's the smallest syntax or whatever.

I understand perfectly that this isn't something you can do in regular
Ruby.  However, I'm interested in seeing if I can make it work
assuming I go and start screwing around with RHS semantics (I'm
thinking by adding something to the Runtime environment that checks if
an object is an instance of this special class).

I got the whole idea for this because we use the language Oz in a
Programming Languages class I'm in.  One of the things that Oz has is
a single assignment store that supports data flow behavior.  The basic
behavioral sematics of Oz is declarational, which makes a single
assignment store a good thing to have.  Ruby, I realize, is
procedural, but I still felt that supporting dataflow behavior in
variables would be an interesting excercise.

Of the ways that I thought it could be done, one of them involved
mucking with global variables wrapped inside of BlankObjects, the
other was adding a keyword to change RHS, and the last was creating an
object with special RHS.

Of those, I like the last one the best.

This isn't for a practical application, I don't intend to actually use
it for any sort of mad science.  I'm more like a kid that decides to
build a nuclear reactor in his basement, but with less radiation.

In any case, thanks for trying to work it out.

--
-Dan Nugent