Re: References to hash elements?

At 1:32 PM -0800 1/6/04, Jeff Clites wrote:
>On Jan 6, 2004, at 9:25 AM, Leopold Toetsch wrote:
>
>>Arthur Bergman <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>Hi,
>>
>>>I am wondering how the references to hash elements are planned to be
>>>done? The call to set_ must somehow be delayed until the time is right.
>>
>>>$foo = \$hash{key};
>>
>>>$$foo = "bar";
>>
>>>$has{key} is now "bar"
>>
>>There was some discussion WRT that issue months ago. Currently the
>>implementation is wrong IMHO. When $hash{key} doesn't exist a new
>>PerlUndef is returned (which is fine) but it should be stored in the
>>hash too, so that assigning to $foo does The Rigth Thing.
>>(Parrot aggregates have reference semantics, so ...)
>
>This may have been discussed previously, but I would think that 
>reading a hash should never auto-vivify elements.

This is entirely a matter of opinion and data design -- both options 
are reasonable, and would depend entirely on the definitions imposed 
by the language (if they're core data elements) or the class author 
(if they're not).
-- 
                                         Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
[email protected]                         have teddy bears and even
                                       teddy bears get drunk