Re: SKILL Q: Coaxing a Symbol to Give Up Its Value Without UsingEVAL?

S. Badel wrote, on 04/17/08 00:05:
>> Anyone who has glanced at the Cadence SKILL do***entation knows the
>> use of eval() is a no-no.  But there are situations in which one binds
>> a value to a symbol and then p***** the QUOTED symbol around before
>> finally needing the actual value associated with the symbol.  What
>> other ways can one get at a symbol's value besides using eval()?
> 
> symeval() does precisely this. But I don't think the end result is any 
> different from using eval().
> 
> I do not see any problems with eval() myself, though.
> 
> Cheers,
> Stéphane

It's preferrable to avoid eval() because:

a) it means you're doing run-time evaluation - this means you're not
taking
    advantage of the byte-code compilation which will improve speed
b) you need to be particularly careful when using SKILL++ code because
    of it needing to understand the scope you're in.

symeval() to some extent is similar, but it's really just looking up a
symbol value, so that's not so costly.

However, often you'd be better off using a macro.

See my previous posting http://tinyurl.com/5wx3y7

Andrew.