[RTcmix-discuss] table issues

[Douglas Scott]

johgibso at indiana.edu wrote:


> 
> I was just thinking that copytable would be a different animal from the
> various mods, and would actually perform all of the mods while it copies
> the table.
> 

To avoid confusion, it would be useful to keep in mind that as long as you 
access a table via its API, it is absolutely irrelevant whether there are "mods" 
or not.  If we copy a table either by reading it a slot at a time via the API, 
or if we copy it using class API which "knows" how to copy, the requester of the 
copy cannot *ever* know whether the object that is being copied "actually" 
contains the values that are copied, or whether there is a 100-link chain of 
operations producing the final value.

This is why is it useful to stay within the bounds of the Object Oriented 
paradigm -- otherwise your thinking tends to gravitate back to old C-based 
patterns of open-to-view structs with their data hanging out for all to see.

-Doug