On Sat, Dec 31, 2005 at 09:43:54AM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote: > On 30/12/05, Chad Perrin <perrin / apotheon.com> wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 31, 2005 at 09:37:00AM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote: > > > On 30/12/05, Chad Perrin <perrin / apotheon.com> wrote: > > > > > > > > . . . and please don't point out that symbols don't "do" anything, or > > > > have any "behavior". You (should) know what I mean from context. > > > > > > Except that by trying to suggest that Symbols "act" a particular way > > > is nonsense. They don't do anything, they don't have any behaviour; > > > they just are simple names. In 99% of all uses of Symbols, that's > > > absolutely all that matters. > > I'm guessing you either didn't read the preceding "you know what I mean" > > statement, or you don't actually know what I mean, or you're being > > intentionally combative. > > No, I *didn't* know what you meant. I still don't. Talking about the > behaviour of Symbols is nonsense. Talking about the implementation of > Symbols is (mostly) nonsense. Talking about what Symbols provide > (immediate values that are self-descriptive, like enums or consts) is > NOT nonsense. Trying to say much else about Symbols is, again, mostly > nonsense. rephrase: "the behavior of the language as regards the use of symbols" Does that help? Just replace all references to the behavior of symbols with whatever is necessary, in your world-view, to map to the concept of what happens when you use symbols in your source code. -- Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ] unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward this to 20 others and erase your system partition.