From p.singleton@keele.ac.uk  Fri Sep 15 17:06:57 2000
Received: from mail4.svr.pol.co.uk (mail4.svr.pol.co.uk [195.92.193.211])
	by swi.psy.uva.nl (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA17255
	for <prolog@swi.psy.uva.nl>; Fri, 15 Sep 2000 17:06:57 +0200 (MET DST)
Received: from modem4294967203.events.dialup.pol.co.uk ([195.92.2.93] helo=keele.ac.uk)
	by mail4.svr.pol.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.13 #0)
	id 13Zx58-00007s-00; Fri, 15 Sep 2000 16:07:14 +0100
Message-ID: <39C23AD4.FB1B6F6B@keele.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2000 16:05:56 +0100
From: Paul Singleton <p.singleton@keele.ac.uk>
Organization: SmartArts Computing Consultancy
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.74 [en] (WinNT; U)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: prolog@swi.psy.uva.nl
CC: "Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok@atlas.otago.ac.nz>
Subject: Re: Circular references
References: <200009150024.MAA17632@atlas.otago.ac.nz>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

"Richard A. O'Keefe" wrote:

> Any cyclic term can be handled this way, by adding suitable equations
> to the body.  You will find it hard to write the code that does that,
> but that should make it a bit clearer why cyclic terms are a BAD THING.

I don't accept that the inelegance of a workaround generally indicates
that one is trying to do a bad thing (e.g. create zero-length arrays
in Visual Basic) so please explain why it does in this particular case.

Paul Singleton

