[Haskell-cafe] pointer equality

[Brandon Allbery]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 13:40, Chris Smith <cdsmith at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 13:32 -0400, Brandon Allbery wrote:
> > of them *will* be safe) — but there is no way for it to crowbar
> > pointer equality tests in that case.
>
> I have looked up crowbar in a number of dictionaries of slang and
> informal usage... and still have no idea what you just said.  Can you
> reword it?
>

Sorry, EE usage:   a crowbar circuit forces a fuse to blow when something
goes out of tolerance.  More generally, it means forcing a failure.


> The point, I think, is that if pointer equality testing really does what
> it says, then there shouldn't *be* any correct implementation in which
>

Maybe it will help if I put it this way:  there's no guarantee that your
pointer equality test is testing anything that has any actual relevance to
how it's evaluating the expression.  In extreme cases, there might not even
be anything to test.

-- 
brandon s allbery                                      allbery.b at gmail.com
wandering unix systems administrator (available)     (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
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