Re: Ice breakers

[Coda Highland <chighland@...>]

On Thu, Nov 8, 2012 at 11:24 AM, liam mail <liam.list@googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 8 November 2012 17:53, David Given <dg@cowlark.com> wrote:
>> Therefore:
>>
>> a = a + 1
>>
>> ...does not *change* the value of the thing a points at. Instead it
>> creates a new number with the value (a+1) and then reassigns a to point
>> at the new number instead of the old one.
>
> How did you come to this conclusion ?
> 'a' is a place on the stack, yes a temp lua_Number is created to store
> the result of a+1 yet 'a'(stack slot) is then assigned the value of
> this temp.
>
> --Liam
>

Read the context.

It doesn't matter what the language *actually* does.

If you have to explain it in terms of stack slots, you've already lost
most beginning programmers. When you say "a = a + 1" you're saying "I
want the name 'a' to refer to the value 'a + 1' " and that's it. Don't
complicate it more than that.

/s/ Adam