Set processing

From: John Lloyd <jwl_at_cs.bris.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 1997 14:42:21 +0100 (BST)

> My final point is about sets. In an earlier message I said that
> sets should be available through the language's ADT mechanism.
> Perhaps, I was too hasty. The language could be more expressive
> and declarative with facilities for set comprehensions, similar to
> list comprehensions. I would like to see examples of the
> definitions and manipulations of sets that call for more than a
> user/library defined ADT.

I cannot see how to provide set abstraction (i.e. set comprehension)
via an ADT. If this is the case, then the ADT loses the most interesting
part of set processing.

The Escher paper has lots of examples which use set abstraction and various
set-processing functions. Comments on these, please. I'd especially like
to hear how to implement it all efficiently :-)

John
Received on Fr Jul 04 1997 - 16:27:00 CEST