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From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Some things that pointer-less languages can't do efficiently
Message-ID: <3807@skye.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 21 Nov 90 20:07:47 GMT
References: <26739:Oct1023:44:2690@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <65450@lanl.gov> <3716@skye.ed.ac.uk> <4223@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton)
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland
Lines: 13

In article <4223@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes:
>In article <3716@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) writes:

>> In Lisp/Scheme, everything (all values of variables) is essentially a
>> pointer.  But then you can factor out the phrase "pointer to" and
>> regard variables as naming the objects directly.  So that's a sense 
>> in which Lisp and Scheme don't have pointers.
>
>Jim Giles has been saying at great length that the problem is ALIASING.

No kidding, Richard.  You will note that I was just providing some
information about pointers and Scheme.  Aliasing is, of course, still
a problem.