A New Revealation: Semi-Permeable Membranes

Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:45:23 -0700

At 01:03 PM 10/26/99 , shapj@us.ibm.com wrote:
>In re default to void, does it simplify matters if a void function is one that
>returns a unique, read-only, distinguished "void object" instead of returning no
>value?

[?] Yes, that's why we do so.
The unique read-only distinguished object is "null".  With polymorphism unrestrained by a static type system, it would be hard to support the returning of no value.  AFAIK, all the non-statically-typed expression languages do likewise.

         Cheers,
         --MarkM