[m-dev.] Reconsidering initialisation of solver types

[Peter Stuckey]

On 27/07/2006, at 1:55 PM, Ralph Becket wrote:

> I propose that we remove automatic initialisation of solver variables
> from the solver types design.
>
> Problems induced by automatic initialisation include:
> - significant complication in the Mercury compiler;
> - unpredictable code generation (i.e., there may be several different
>   ways local solver variables in a clause could be automatically
>   initialised, each leading to different scheduled code) which  
> makes it
>   harder to understand error messages;
> - solver code often appears near impure code and error messages in  
> these
>   circumstances are often misleading (i.e., a symptom is reported  
> rather
>   than the cause);
> - manual initialisation does not seem to be an issue for most solver
>   programs (i.e., most of them explicitly initialise solver variables
>   anyway), although this will make Programs using Herbrand variables
>   ever so slightly less concise (but who uses Herbrand variables? :-)

It makes Mercury unusable as a constraint programming language!
It will add a burden to Cadmium to initialize all variables explicitly!

Peter
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