global problems

[James Spencer]

On Aug 2, 2005, at 6:13 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> In any language I've worked with, you declare a global and it stays  
> in memory until you delete it or quit the program.
>
> I don't know of any language that deletes globals automatically  
> based on whether the app closes or opens files from disk.
>

This of course brings us back to the real issue here.  What is  
different about Rev as versus other most other languages from Think  
Pascal through Xcode Objective C is that when you are running a stack  
in the IDE, the IDE IS the app and as you note, globals stick around  
until the app exits or you delete them.

The remarkably tight integration between the projects we are building  
and the IDE itself requires a concept change in many areas, not just  
globals, e.g. messaging.  When I send an Objective C message in an  
Xcode program, even with ZeroLink on, that message is not going to  
get to Xcode itself.  But system messages that I don't handle can get  
to all kinds of places I didn't expect.

Rev is just different in this regard and because of that difference,  
you need and want the behavior to be exactly what it is because the  
only way the IDE could tell that you want a certain group of stacks  
to be considered an "app" would be by limiting the flexibility we  
have now.  Yes, this requires that the programmer be aware of  
possible side effects in and from other stacks but that is no more  
true for globals than it is for say the preopenstack message.

James P. Spencer
Rochester, MN

jspencer78 at charter.net

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