[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Dinesh, you are right that one can develop a cloning algorithm that defers any copying until the object is modified, a copy-on-write algorithm. But such an algorithm would depend on knowing that ref counts are used only for cloning. Given this assumption, when the ref count was greater than one, the code could choose to copy an instantiate a new instance of the object when it was modified. I don't think that assumption is met today. I see ref counts implemented currently for attributes and namespaces, and not for elements or text. In particular, for attributes, this allows the user of axiom to create an attribute one time, and attach it to several elements as needed. And it could be that this user wants the ability to change the attribute value once and have the modification apply to all the elements that share it. Now maybe this is a capability that was not foreseen and is not supported, but it exists nonetheless. So one cannot implement a copy-on-write algorithm without risking breaking existing code.
Given the chances of breaking the existing - shall we do this change on a temporary branch, rather than on the svn head?
This way, we have more room for taking risks and fixing breaks. Thanks, Samisa... --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
