🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan7.145511.718@lpi.liant.com>, pkt@lpi.liant.com (Scott Turner) writes:
> 
> Identity of objects is more of the essence than storage, so it would be
> problematic to define the former in terms of the latter.

Even this is not so clear, is it?  "Identity" means to me that we can
distinguish between two instances of a class using only the attributes of the
class itself (i.e. without using anything from derived classes which the class
might happen to be a base class of).  This in turn implies that somewhere
within each instance is some storage which conceptually could hold some
identifying value.  (Otherwise, there would be no way for two instances to
have different attributes.)

In other words, it makes more sense to me to restrict the concept of
"object identity" as being meaningful *only* when applied to instances of
a class which contains storage members within itself or its ancestors.
(Then it doesn't really matter whether pointers to non-storage class objects
compare equal or not, because there is no "identity" to be found that way
in the first place.)

Bill Linke
linke@kirin.sbi.com