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>>>>> "David" == David Rush <kumo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: David> Yes. And I must admit that in these terms I find this proposal David> somewhat seductive. However, Per's analogy with the C `&' operator David> makes very clear how big this issue is. SRFI-17 is tinkering with David> fundamental language semantics. How does adding *explicit* pointer David> types and the accompanying pointer-aliasing problems interact with the David> compiled Schemes? Or how they interact with the garbage collector? David> Now, I am not totally opposed to this idea, but I rather like David> the way that things currently work in Scheme. The proposed model of David> L-values actually seems remarkably close to SML's ref type (which I David> like), but with an important difference: In Scheme (AFAIU) *all* names David> are bound to values of ref type, whereas in SML only those names which David> are explicitly declared to be so are. Scheme includes some magic so David> that all values of ref type are automatically dereferenced, *except* David> in the case of SET!. SET-CAR! & friends don't even enter into the David> picture, they are simply operations on opaque types following the David> usual Scheme rules. You might want to check out: Michael Sperber, Peter Thiemann: ML and the Address Operator Proceedings of the 1998 ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on ML Pages 4--13 The paper addresses pretty much all of these issues. I'll send PostScript to anyone who's interested. -- Cheers =8-} Mike Friede, Völkerverständigung und überhaupt blabla