Structs

[Daniel Dudley]

Be careful, James, with a suggestion like that you will
probably be accused of attacking the whole Erlang language,
or that you should like it or lump it, or even that you
should write your own replacement language. :-(

That the record 'saga' is a recurring embarrassment to
Erlang is evident in Joe's fine work on structs. What
doesn't seem to be apparent to the implementors is that
the problem isn't going to go away by itself. A year from
now some smart-alec is going to raise the same questions
again, then a year on from that ..., then a year on from
that ...,  then a year on from that ..., then a year on
from that ..., ... And all this time the code base is
growing, requiring more -- albeit not difficult -- work
to correct one's code should the implementors ever get
their heads out of the sand and make necessary changes.

But as I said, one should be careful not to promote such
wild suggestions -- we really must learn to accept the
(im)perfect Erlang world as it is today. So everyone:
please don't read this message, I really wouldn't want to
be accused of attacking the whole Erlang language (again).

Daniel

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Hague" <jamesh@REDACTED>
To: <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 8:53 PM
Subject: Re: Structs 

> >What about cond (or something like it)?
> >Isn't that coming soon to Erlang?
> 
> I was always under the impression that the reason records were
> never replaced with something neater was because there was
> little incentive to go in and fiddle with the core language.
> But now "try" is on the way, as are structured modules, and
> possibly "cond."  Surely record improvements are a higher
> priority?
> 
> James