const

[Sean Kelly]

== Quote from Walter Bright (newshound1 at digitalmars.com)'s article
> Sean Kelly wrote:
> > Surely you aren't suggesting that the English language consists entirely of
> > four words, all which have the same meaning?  That aside, my point was
> > that I find it somewhat troubling that you feel this way and yet still chose
> > the keywords that we have now.  Surely, a language should prefer a literal
> > representation which accurately describes the underlying concept being
> > symbolized.  If you actually felt that 'const' and 'invariant' had distinct
> > meanings which were appropriate for the underlying concepts then I'd
> > feel more at ease, even if I didn't agree.
> But there aren't any such words - what word means "read only view, but
> others can modify the value" ? "readonly" isn't it, as that commonly
> means in embedded systems "nobody can write it" and has been used as a
> storage class to mean just that in embedded systems languages.

I've suggested "view" in the past, and there must be others.  Alternately,
invent a word as you've said or come up with syntax that doesn't require
a keyword to indicate this concept.  Truth be told however, my issue with
the keywords in 2.0 has more to do with the change in meaning of "const"
than with the words themselves.  My initial response above was simply an
expression of surprise that you felt the words all had identical meanings
and yet we were using them to represent different things.


Sean