[REBOL] Re: x: :y question
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 4-Feb-2003 8:32
Hi, Romano,
This way lies madness! ;-)
Romano Paolo Tenca wrote:
> You can use the only unused op !
>
> !=: either x < 0 [:+][:-]
> a: a != 1
>
> or re-use another op.
>
... thus making the code even harder to read/understand for anyone
who must work with it (including the original author, once it is
no longer fresh on the mind).
Extending a language with new concepts/words is one thing, but
changing the meanings of concepts/words already existing in the
language is quite another (cf. "glory" in _Alice_in_Wonderland_).
These statements especially apply here, as the distance between
the redefinition and the use of the redefined word may be
arbitrarily large (in either time or lexically within the source
code), thus making detection of the cause of later unpleasant
surprises increasingly difficult.
Just my $0.02 ...
-jn-
