Re: Feature request: names for constants

[Brigham Toskin <brighamtoskin@...>]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2015 at 9:11 AM, Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@tecgraf.puc-rio.br> wrote:

This already does exactly what you want.
...
Bottom line: there isn't a problem that needs to be solved by adding a syntax
for constants. The parser might be smart and use the constant's index instead
of the local's index, but they are both just an array access in the VM.

A local has different semantics than a true const, though; a local can be reassigned, whereas a name is bound immutably for the lifetime of the reference, for a const. It represents a compiler-enforced safeguard against certain kinds of bugs, and adds meta-semantic information about programmer intention for subsequent readers of your code.

I'll let y'all decide if those are worth the effort and added complexity of extending the core language, but a "smart enough" compiler doesn't provide some of the user-facing benefits as true constants.

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Brigham Toskin