clarification on single assignment

[Ulf Wiger]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Martin Bjorklund wrote:

>But Erlang doesn't even have assignment in the first place!  '=' means
>match, which binds unbound variables.  For example,
>  A = 1,
>  A = 2  % badmatch, or reassign?
>
>match is of course more powerful than assignment.

No argument from me, except that in the Erlang white paper, and in
many other places, Erlang is described as a single-assignment
language:

"In contrast to, for example C variables, Erlang variables can only be
assigned once - when a variable has been bound to a value, we cannot
bind it to a new value."

Following your line of reasoning, we should change this do something
like:

"In contrast to, for example C, Erlang does not have an assignment
operator - variables are automatically bound via pattern matching.
When a variable has been bound to a value, we cannot bind it to a new
value."

Or is that too confusing?

/Uffe (who doesn't really need or want an assignment operator)
-- 
Ulf Wiger                                    tfn: +46  8 719 81 95
Senior System Architect                      mob: +46 70 519 81 95
Strategic Product & System Management    ATM Multiservice Networks
Data Backbone & Optical Services Division      Ericsson Telecom AB