Record selectors

[Daniel Dudley]

Here are some papers that may be of interest to the
community. Judge freely, there may be some useful stuff in
the context of this thread.

http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/projects/cecil/www/research.html

Daniel

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Dudley" <daniel.dudley@REDACTED>
To: "erlang-questions" <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 9:42 AM
Subject: Re: Record selectors

> Thanks for your imput, lads. I think I'll conclude that
> Erlang's implementation of records is a mess (a wart on
> Erlang's bottom as Matthias puts it) and thus best avoided.
> They must be a big embarrassment to Erlang. In fact, I
> should think it would be a great service to the community
> if records (in their current form) were phased out as soon
> as possible. Call it an experiment that went horribly wrong.
>
> Chris proposes that country (for example) be a real,
> unique, opaque type that couldn't be confused with any
> other type. I couldn't agree more; record is a type that
> has specific subtypes. This is analogous to objects, which
> are derived from an abstract base object. Clearly
> implementable (efficiently and safely) without use of
> 'orrible syntax.
>
> I'm disheartened now, but I do remain hopeful of soon-to-be
> encouraging changes.
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel