>  My goal with Cloverfield is to keep the existing Tcl semantics 
>  (copy-on-write, pass-by-value) while adding references. This implies 
>  that the string rep of a structure holding references may change over 
>  time. This would be grossly inefficient if the whole string rep had to 
>  be recreated over and over again, especially for large structures, so we 
>  need an efficient string representation that allows for selective 
>  invalidation of substrings. 

Is this really true?  It seems to me it is only true for things wanting
to get at the string rep.  And yes, you want to be able to puts($obj)
but if all the code you are calling is compiled and knows how to get 
at the internals isn't that a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too?
-- 
---
Larry McVoy                lm at bitmover.com           http://www.bitkeeper.com

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