Re: Fun with lfuns: `= and `[..]=

Chris Angelico wrote:

On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 3:44 AM, Stephen R. van den Berg srb@cuci.nl wrote:

...

• There obviously is no `= lfun. Is that technically challenging or hasn't there simply been no need to make it possible?

Don't like this idea! When you assign to a name, it should always rebind. Imagine:

mixed foo = String.Buffer(); foo = "asdf";

Should that call foo->`=("asdf"), or reassign foo? IMO it should absolutely always reassign. Otherwise you get something like PHP's references - a pain to work with.

The operation could be determined by "overloading" based on types. I.e. a String Buffer `=(string a) would only activate when the lvalue is a buffer type, and the rvalue is of type string.