GNU bug report logs - #14792
Error in manual "(guile-2) Object Properties"

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Message #17 received at 14792 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org>
To: Mark H Weaver <mhw <at> netris.org>
Cc: 14792 <at> debbugs.gnu.org, Ludovic Courtès <ludo <at> gnu.org>
Subject: Re: bug#14792: Error in manual "(guile-2) Object Properties"
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2013 20:46:29 +0200

Mark H Weaver <mhw <at> netris.org> writes:

> I can easily think of many possible uses for this, e.g. for memoizing
> unary numeric functions, associating application-specific data
> structures with file descriptors or array indices, etc.
>
> Regardless, our manual has been telling people they could do this for a
> long time.  To make matters worse, those who have tried using
> object-properties have likely observed that it works as advertised.
> They probably don't realize that it will silently fail for large
> integers.

Fixing the documentation will not change the behavior.  So they are not
worse off than before.

> 'eqv?' is Scheme's fundamental "operational equivalence" predicate.
> 'eq?' is just an ugly efficiency hack, a poor cousin of 'eqv?' that
> fails in surprising ways.  No _correct_ program is ever broken by making
> 'eq?' an alias to 'eqv?'.  Many programs contain subtle bugs because of
> their inappropriate use of 'eq?'.
>
> What's the argument on the other side?  Is there a compelling reason to
> use 'eq?' instead of 'eqv?' for object properties?

object identity is checked by eq? and is conceptually different from
value equality.

When calling a thing an "object property", it is not helpful when it
does not behave like one.

-- 
David Kastrup

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