Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>>   I assume that means that Haskell doesn't handle objects (if it even has
>>> such a concept) by value, only by reference (which, in fact, isn't very
>>> surprising to me).
> 
>> Semantically, this is a rather difficult question to answer for a purely 
>> functional language where the data can't be mutated.
> 
>   Well, if eg. integers can be handled by value, why not user-defined
> objects?

There's no need to?  Whether the language implements user objects as values 
or as something pointed to makes no difference to the meaning of the 
language. It's of course an efficiency trade-off, which is why I said it's 
*semantically* difficult to answer.

Even if Haskell is passing around pointers to user objects, it's still not 
pass-by-reference in the usual sense of the word, because the values are 
immutable.

My comment might not have been 100% in line with what you were asking about. 
I just thought it was an interesting point.  In a language where you can't 
modify memory once you've allocated it, is there any semantic difference 
between allocating it on the heap or allocating it inline somewhere? I don't 
think so.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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