Re: A New Revealation: Semi-Permeable Membranes Bill Frantz (frantz@communities.com)
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 17:56:14 -0700

At 05:45 PM 10/26/1999 -0700, Mark S. Miller wrote:
>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.

[+] In Algol68, VOID is a type with one value which is written EMPTY.