[mercury-users] Event handling in mercury

[Ralph Becket]

> From: Peter Schachte [mailto:schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU]
> Sent: 23 July 2001 16:36
> 
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2001 at 09:55:08PM +1000, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> > On 17-Jul-2001, Holger Krug <hkrug at rationalizer.com> wrote:
> 
> > > Maybe better to use the term "static" than global, directly
> > > corresponding to mainstream e.g. Java terminology.
> >
> > OK, that's probably a good idea.
> 
> 'Static' isn't really a very good name for it, even though it's common
> practice.  I hate explaining to students that static doesn't mean what
they
> think it means (unchanging), 'final' does.  Static means "shared."
> 
> Really, "static variable" is an oxymoron.  I can't imagine what
possessed
> K&R to use that word (for two completely different things:  "having
the
> lifetime of the whole program execution" and "not visible outside this
> file.")

I agree.  The aim is to name storage locations that persist throughout
the
lifetime of a program's execution.  `global' does it for me because
that's
in universal parlance, `io_var' is perhaps a better name (that's exactly

what it is...)  `static' really jars, although I could learn to  live
with
it.

- Ralph
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