Hi Gabrielle, > The reason we need them, is that words actually refer to values > with an additional layer of indirection. A "double pointer" if you > want to call it this way. Why? Because otherwise each word > "instance" would have a different reference. Changing one word > would not change all the other words with the same spelling. > > So we have something like: > > some-word -----------\ > ()---------> value > some-word -----------/ > > > some-other-word ----->()---------> value
I just would like to make sure that I understood it correctly. One could describe a simple example as follows: [ f: func [x] [print [x]] f 1 ; == 1 x: 2 b1: reduce [first second second :f] ; == [x] print b1 ; == 1 ] - () is the indirection pointer Gabrielle used in his arrow sketch, which belongs to a certain word while running the script - value is the right-most side he used global context table: () | value -------------------------------------------------- 'f | reference to 'f 'print | reference to 'print 'first | reference to 'first 'second | reference to 'second 'func | reference to 'func [] | reference to function argument block [] | reference to function body block [] | reference to reduce block 'b1 | reference to reduce block 'x | 2 function context table: () | value ---------------------------------------- 'x | unset! or later 1 [] | block in function block The left side with the words from Gabrielles sketch is either a second table with names which could be there more than once or just references in the Rebol internal structure when interpreting a block. Could it look like that ? [ f-1: func-1 [x-1]-1 [print-1 [x-2]-1]-1 f-2 1 ; == 1 x-3: 2 b1-1: reduce-1 [first-1 second-1 second-2 :f-3]-1 ; == [x-4]-1 print-2 b1-2 ; == 1 ] The -X means always a reference to the according 'word in question in the context table. If I understood correctly that has to be like that as we have actually just data, so after one run of evaluation a block of data it's still just data and we need more versions of one word (this is what I understood as "instances" of a word). So Rebol musst keep internally some map of internal identifiers to names in the block. Like word -> context () ---------------------------- f-1 -> 'f in global context x-1 -> 'x in function context x-2 -> 'x in function context x-3 -> 'x in global context x-4 -> 'x in function context . . . So if one updates or changes 'x in the function context x-1, x-2, x-4 will change too. But if I would bind x-2 into the global context then only the word -> context mapping table has to be modified. Maybe Ladislavs view is even easier, to think just of every instance as some kind of object which has an attached context field and a value field which is double referenced, thus referes to the () and then to the value (or just the () field which is the context anyway). The reason I'm so verbose is that I didn't see so much the need of the leftmost part with the "instances" of a word or wasn't sure what is exactly meant by instances of a word. But because we don't have code and a fixed scope for the variables we can't reduce it to just one word per scope and thus there have to be the many "instances" of one word. I hope I don't annoy somebody with these lengthy post. But I have the feeling that this thread is/was very informative to me at least, stuff I hadn't figured out in detail so far. (unless now somebody tells .... ���hm yes, but .... ) :-) regards Michael P.S.: I thought about just deleting the post, but maybe it's not that stupid (and obvious) after all. -- To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to lists at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject.
