Re: Namestring&pathstring returning shared structure

[Alan Snyder <snyder%hplsny@hplabs.HP.COM>]

        CLU solved this problem by making STRING a different type than ARRAY of
        CHARACTER, and by making STRINGs immutable.  We found having immutable STRINGs
        to be extremely useful: one can pass a string to a procedure or return it from
        a procedure without worrying that someone might destructively modify it!  This
        idea was such a win that a later revision of CLU had both immutable and
        mutable arrays and immutable and mutable records.

    It must be a bitch to write an editor in CLU, or do you just implement
    lines as arrays of characters instead of as strings, thereby losing the
    textual benefit of debugging and having to write separate output
    routines to display these "strings"?

Actually, the Ted editor (written in CLU) did use strings to represent lines
of text.  I believe using immutable strings is not uncommon, as it allows an
EQ-test in display update.
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