From: Mark Wilson <mwilson13@...>
Date: 2003-08-19T05:49:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Question: immutable strings as design goal?


On Monday, August 18, 2003, at 04:01 PM, A.M. Kuchling wrote:

> [snip]

> Mutable strings also result in a more complicated implementation. One 
> of
> Python's principles is to keep the implementation as simple as 
> possible;
> think of it as XP's rule of "Do the simplest thing that can possibly 
> work."

I think this is part of Ruby's overall philosophy -- the focus is on 
providing power to the programmer and secondarily on making the 
language implementation simpler.

I am aware (as a result of reading what others have said and not from 
experience), however, that this does make it harder to write the 
interpreter, much less to write a Ruby compiler for a real or virtual 
machine. I think this is one source of the tremendous feeling of 
gratitude among Ruby users for matz's work.

>
> [snip]
>
> So what's a language implementor to do?  You could have some sort of 
> flag on
> strings indicating 'this is in a dictionary: no mutation'.

Or you could do what Ruby does (as elucidated by Dave Thomas in 
previous posts).

> [snip]

Regards,

Mark