- From: Williams, Stuart <skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 23:52:25 +0100
- To: "'Tim Berners-Lee'" <timbl@w3.org>
- Cc: "Williams, Stuart" <skw@hplb.hpl.hp.com>, www-tag@w3.org
> I have used "dereference" to mean to "get that identified by" as in > dereferencing a pointer. Ok... but if the pointer were used on the left-hand side of an assignment, would it not be being dereferenced? p->somefield = somevalue; //cf. PUT > The meaning here is I think > the same as your "retrieval, except that I prefer "dereference" > as it seems to me to be an abstract function -- the referent > as a function of the identifier, while 'retrieve" indicates motion > of something (as in a Labrador trotting back with a duck). :-) so far my black Labrador has yet to do that... > In a computer system, you can dereference something which > identifies a file or a document. Yes... but, subject to access rights, I can both read and write to a file/document using such an identifier. Certainly, one can say that, by definition the concept of dereference on the Web is read only. > Tim Stuart
Received on Monday, 15 July 2002 18:52:47 UTC