Re: Principle of Orthogonal Design

On Feb 9, 2:12 am, Marshall <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 7, 3:19 pm, David BL <davi..._at_iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > On Feb 8, 4:43 am, Marshall <marshall.spi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Well, at the very least we have to be careful to distinguish
> > > the use of the equals sign between its use as the equality
> > > relation and its use as name-binding.
>
> > In a way I don't really see a fundamental distinction. I think the
> > special syntax is needed to deal with variable names that are local to
> > a sub-expression, because with implicit variable names on predicates
> > we can get name clashes. These would be impossible to deal with if
> > all variables had global scope.
>
> If we substitute "lexical scope" for "sub-expression" in the above
> then I agree. I recoil from the idea of names that are local
> just to a specific sub-expression.

Please forgive my ignorance, but what is the distinction? Are you saying that a lexical scope should be more general - ie a lexical scope may not correspond to a particular sub-expression? Received on Sat Feb 09 2008 - 00:37:52 CET