Re: Modeling question...

On Nov 15, 9:57 am, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
> David BL wrote:
> > On Nov 15, 1:35 am, paul c <toledobythe..._at_oohay.ac> wrote:
> >> paul c wrote:
>
> >> ...
>
> >>> Here, 'n' is a value, not a pointer (as far as the RM is concerned), ...
> >> Oops, meant to say 'n' is a value, not a variable.
>
> > Well I agree with that, but note that I actually stated that 'n' was a
> > *name* of a variable. The variable itself has more to with the
> > existence of the tuple
>
> > value(n,10)
>
> > which records the current value of the variable named n.
> > ...
>
> If what you say is pertinent, then the current value of variable n is 'n'!

Consider that there is some thing with a name - let's say the name is the literal string 'x'. It is common practise to use an 'x' without the quotes directly in a natural language sentence as a place holder for the thing that has the name 'x'.

Eg rather than say "the human with name 'bill' has age 10" we find it convenient to say "bill has age 10". Of course it makes no sense to think that the literal string 'bill' has an age.

Similarly in our example 'n' is a string literal which is the name of a variable, even though it is conventional to say "the variable n has the value 10". In the context of this discussion you could instead say "the variable with the name 'n' holds the value 10".

Given that I already went to the trouble to avoid the confusion between "the thing" and "the name of the thing", what is your point exactly? Received on Sat Nov 15 2008 - 03:33:24 CET