Addressing the last element of a list  Donn Cave donn at Thu Nov
10 22:16:19 CET 2005  In article <863bm46zbh.fsf at>, Mike Meyer
<mwm at>  > Most OO languages do the name/variable thing, but
some of the popular > ones aren't consistent about it, giving
some types "special" status, > so that sometimes "a = b" causes
b to be copied onto a, and sometimes > it causes a to become a
pointer to b. I find a consistent approach is > preferable.  Who
wouldn't.  > Most OO languages also have the mutable/immutable
object thing. The > set of which objects are immutable changes
from language to > language. It's really only relevant in this
case because the solution > to "I want to change an alias" issue
involves using a mutable object.  Yes, and furthermore it's only
vaguely relevant.  I mean, it really requires a particular kind
of mutability, where one object can store a reference to
another.  That's easy to find in core object types, and of
course it is a kind of mutability, but it isn't the definition
of mutable.  So