[TAO] value() to obtain pointer functionality

[Mike Kerner]

Oh, yeah, and Tao refers to just that - Tao, i.e. the way.  With each
development tool there are caveats, provisos, and surprises that come up.
 In a discussion several years ago for one of those tools, the president of
the company explained away several really annoying side-effects as "The Tao
of" (the development tool).  So, this is one of those Tao of LiveCode
things - it probably wasn't intended this way, but this is an interesting
behavior that probably has other implications and applications that nobody
has thought of, yet.



On Mon, Jul 28, 2014 at 8:04 PM, Jerry Jensen <jhj at jhj.com> wrote:

> I think actually its more equivalent to evaluating an expression. It still
> has to parse the parameter, otherwise value(2+3) wouldn't work. That has
> nothing to do with pointers. A DO statement has to handle verbs too, so its
> more work.
> .Jerry
>
> On Jul 28, 2014, at 4:57 PM, Mike Kerner <MikeKerner at roadrunner.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Craig,
> > This is equivalent to dereferencing a pointer, which is what I was
> > referring to.  After reading the explanation in the dictionary, this is
> not
> > what I expected.  When I said value(b), I expected LC to just dumbly
> return
> > "a", but was sort-of hoping that I'd get "1", so part of me is giddy, and
> > part of me is annoyed at all the code I've written that would have been
> > much shorter and simpler with it, and faster.
> > You know, things like repeats that walk x1..x24
> >
> > Richard,
> > The thing that surprises me is that evaluating "b" to get "a", and then
> > saying "hmm, I wonder what that means", looking it up, and returning IT'S
> > value is faster than the fastest DO I could generate.
>
>
>
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