[m-dev.] proposal: user-defined equality predicates

Fergus Henderson fjh at cs.mu.oz.au
Fri Jun 27 15:26:35 AEST 1997


Tyson Richard DOWD, you wrote:
> > On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Tyson Richard DOWD wrote:
> > 
> > > I thought standard equality was syntactic?
> > 
> > Functions put an end to that.
> 
> So did overloading.

Not really.  In a type-correct program with overloading, equality can
still be syntactic, so long as you don't have functions.
For example, `foo = foo' is always true, if type-correct;
overloading just introduces the possibility of ambiguity errors.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh at cs.mu.oz.au>   |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh at 128.250.37.3         |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.



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