Re: fun with declarations and definitions

[Christopher Li <sparse@chrisli.org>]

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>
> Of course it does need that (and it's not C0X news, obviously).  We still
> have the type handling messed up in a lot of areas, so the plan is to
> sort out the declaration parsing, then get rid of the warts in type
> representation and handling, then deal with composites.


>
> IMO the right way to look at that crap is:
>        * any declaration gives a new struct symbol, with type being the
> composite of that given by declaration and that of previously seen one
> (which, in turn, has gathered all earlier stuff)
>        * type nodes should be treated as expressions, with on-demand
> evaluation and referential transparency (i.e. any rewrite replaces with
> equal).  We are not that far from such state.

Can you elaborate the referential transparency? I currently have a vague
idea of what you are trying to do. Where should I start if I am going
to turn the idea into code. Should we delay the detail of type
information until evaluate stage?


Chris