Re: More on lists and sets

"Jan Hidders" <jan.hidders_at_REMOVETHIS.pandora.be> wrote in message news:3HGTf.327990$8T4.10329223_at_phobos.telenet-ops.be...
> David Cressey wrote:
> >
> > [...] A cursor is a named query, declared in the
> > context of a user process (program), that can be invoked to play the
role
> > of a list. I haven't seen cursors discussed as if they were lists, but
it
> > seems to make an eminent amount of sense to me.
>
> Really? Cursors are an inherent procedural concept and I would think
> that is the last thing you want in what should be a declarative query
> and manipulation langauge.

It depends. If you have already made the decision that what you want is a declarative manipulation language then what you say is true. It's not clear to me that programmers really want that. Or that they should want that if they don't.

I think that it's no coincidence that traditional languages emphasized support for lists, procedural expressiveness, and single record at a time processing. My interest is how a programmer can "have the cake and eat it too". Received on Tue Mar 21 2006 - 07:19:13 CET