Peter Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Another one for my wish list: deep copying support built in.
I don't like this. Not because it isn't useful -- of course it is.
But it seems to me to add very little to the language, at the cost of
a great deal of linguistic baggage.
Consider this: shallow copying is rightfully (I hope we agree) the
default. Writing a `copy' function is easy (perhaps a `copy' builtin
would even satisfy you). This would be bearable, maybe.
But PLEASE don't add a new assignment operator for this! For a start,
making a deep copy makes sense even when no assignment is involved
(hence the `copy' suggestion above). However, no less useful than
deep copy is k-level copy, especially when k==1. Before long, we'll
have `=', `:=', `<-' and maybe `===' operators in the language, for
the different levels of copying. This is needless bloat.
[...]
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