Re: [Caml-list] let mutable (was OCaml Speed for Block Convolutions)

[John Max Skaller <skaller@ozemail.com.au>]

Pierre Weis wrote:

> A more interesting contribution would be to give evidences that
> references and arrays and other imperative features are indeed built
> with lvalues in Caml.

	To do that, one must understand what an lvalue is.
In C, it is an expression term obeying certain syntactic
constraints.  That is, it is not a matter of semantics,
or typing: an lvalue is a particular piece of syntax.

	To say that another way, some constraints on the
language _syntax_ are not imposed by the grammar, but by 
additional rules such as 'the argument of the unary & operator
must be an lvalue'.

	This is NOT the case in C++, where the typing
is related to lvalueness. Note that in BOTH cases,
lvalueness is related to addressability, NOT necessarily
mutability. In C++, non-lvalues are definitely mutable!

	[The rules in C++ are a shambles]

-- 
John (Max) Skaller, mailto:skaller@maxtal.com.au
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