[REBOL] Re: Sameness - a pragmatic approach.
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 11-Feb-2003 20:49
Hi, Gabriele,
Gabriele Santilli wrote:
> Hi Joel,
>
> On Tuesday, February 11, 2003, 11:13:43 PM, you wrote:
>
> JN> 1) It's not clear to me what problem ALIAS is supposed to solve;
>
> Translations. If you wanted to translate REBOL or any REBOL
> dialect into another human language (i.e. not English).
>
>> stampa: :print
>> protect 'stampa
>> stampa: 13
** Script Error: Word stampa is protected, cannot modify
** Near: stampa: 13
Either way, doesn't it still take up another word slot in the global
dict^H^H^H^Hcontext.
> JN> 2) It's not clear to me why ALIASes must be immutable;
>
> Because once you have said that "stampa" is a different spelling
> for "print", the current implementation is no more able to "undo"
> this, probably for the same reason why words cannot be removed
> from contexts.
>
I must be missing something. The question of why ALIASes "must" be
immutable isn't answered by the fact that they currently are. That
only begs the question again, "But *WHY* are they, and would it
break something crucial if that were changed?"
-jn-
