On Sun, Jul 03, 2005 at 01:53:45PM +0200, demerphq wrote: > On 7/2/05, Andrew Pimlott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sat, Jul 02, 2005 at 08:55:34AM +0200, demerphq wrote: > > > The entire basis of computer science is based around the idea that if > > > you do the same operation to two items that are the same the end > > > result is the same. > > > > Citing "computer science" as the basis of your position is just too > > much. The "computer science" answer to the comparison of references is > > that they are equal if and only if they are the same reference. > > We arent talking about reference equivelence, but rather topological > equivelence or graph equivelence.
That's fine, I just object to throwing around "observationally equivalent" or "bisimilar" to justify this. > > Finally, I think that comparing functions (which started this > > discussion) is insane! > > And on the TODO list now. Its actually not that hard to do. It may be not that hard to determine whether two functions have the same implementation, but of course you'll never determine (in general) whether two functions have the same behavior. So such comparisons will always be of limited usefulness--say, for testing (de)serialization, as Michael said. Andrew
