Re: Topes - a proposal

[Matthias Blume <blume@cs.Princeton.EDU>]

I just skimmed through the article and found that your ``topes'' are
(almost) exactly the value-cells as introduced by David Krantz' Orbit
compiler and similar others (like VSCM II :).  ML facilitates ``ref''
which seems to do the same job.

Value cell creation and dereferencing a la ORBIT can be introduced
automatically by the compiler for all local variables because it can
easily check the entire scope of that variable for occurences of ``set!''.
The difference is that value-cells are not directly accessible by the
programmer.  You can still define ``cons'' in terms of ``lambda'' and
``set!'', but it (usually) will be much less efficient.

ML's ``ref'', however, seem to be precisely the same as your ``topes''.

Comments?

-Matthias