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6 points by skenney26 5949 days ago | link | parent

Great question. According to the comments in ac.scm PG is wondering the same thing:

  "do we really want is to ret t for distinct strings?"


1 point by bOR_ 5949 days ago | link

Ah.. but here PG is wondering into the opposite direction of what eekee is, if I understand correctly.. PG seems to be favoring the following distinction:

is .. checks if a is the same thing as b (like pointers referring to the same address in memory).

iso .. checks if the content at whatever a is pointing at is the same as whatever b is pointing at.

which is now violated by strings. I am not sure how numbers fit into this. In general I would favor the more commonly used 'has the same content as' to be is, and 'refers to the same entity' to be iso for brevity reasons.

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2 points by oconnor0 5943 days ago | link

But isn't iso short for isomorphic which, as I understand it, is the same as "these two things are equivalent" - which maps much more closely to "has the same content as," not "refers to the same entity"?

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