xotcl-bounces@alice.wu-wien.ac.at wrote on 03/19/2006 04:08:40 AM:
On 19 Mar 2006, at 00:12, Scott Gargash wrote:
When would you need the namespace of the object?
I have only ever needed the namespace of an object which attaching traces to variables (f.ex. with Tk), but for that it is, unfortunately quite necessary.
I haven't used it yet, but doesn't the "trace" method handle this?
As an aside, I find Tcl's lack of true references to be one of its nagging flaws.
Yes, this is a problem. If Tcl had proper references then we could do garbage collection for objects. The problem is that Tcl's principle of everything being a string kind of conflicts with references. References can be represented as strings, although not very useful strings, but they really aren't strings. I mean, if the string output for a reference is 0x123456, but I generated that through some other string operations (or, say we lose the original Tcl object through various operations) then that will no longer necessarily work as a reference if the original is gone.
Amen, brother. For years I've tossed around thoughts on how to have references in Tcl, but I can't come up with a way to do it without breaking "everything is a string". And if that breaks, well, it's not Tcl anymore.
But I want lambdas. :)
This is particularly problematic as Tcl still has quite a habit of losing that original representation which naturally I hope will be reduced in the future.
Where do you see this happening? Do you mean losing the original representation via shimmering, or something else?
Scott