Re: [Axiom-mail] Equivalence between named domain and %

[Waldek Hebisch]

Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> If my understanding is correct, this problem touches upon the fact
> that the SPAD compiler does not know (at the moment) how to properly
> resolve recursive declaration/definitions of types.  Is that correct?
> 
> Since, under the hood, almost everything is a pointer, why is the
> compiler having trouble admitting recursion?
> 

AFAICS Spad types are global and separately compiled. Recursive
dependencies are painful when you want separate compilation.

Also, during type checking compiler traverses varoius links (references)
between types -- on has to be careful to avoid infinite loops
(and when loop is detected how to give sane semantic to the loop).

I am not sure if just telling "recursive type definitons are OK" is
a good idea.  Some restrictions on recursion are clearily needed,
and with such restrictions old-fashioned techniqe of forward
declarations may work well.

-- 
                              Waldek Hebisch
address@hidden