Ruth A. Kramer wrote:

> Florian Gross wrote:
> 
>>I'd just say that Objects are in most cases represented by VALUEs. I'm
>>not sure what you mean with "encoded instance variables".
> 
> (Not "picking" on Florian in particular, just needed a convenient quote
> to respond to.) 
> 
> This thread confuses me, and I think it's at least partly by
> "overloaded" use of the word "value". ;-)

Oh, note that me talking about VALUE was just the way Object's are 
presented. VALUEs are a frequently-used way to refer to Objects. It's a 
C type that Ruby uses internally. It's usually just a pointer to some 
object data in the form of a RBasic-compatible struct. (Or a magic 
number in the case of immediate objects.)

> For me, I'd like to separate address and value to the extent possible.

I guess one could say that addresses are represented by VALUEs.

I'm not sure of the relationship between values and VALUEs. Maybe you 
could say that the value of a variable is indicated by a VALUE. But all 
this VALUE stuff does not matter anyway when you're coding in Ruby. I 
think it can safely be ignored until you write a C extension or decide 
to hack at Ruby's internals via Ruby/DL. ;)

I hope I did not confuse anybody, even if this was not directed to me in
particular. :)