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Alaric Snell wrote:
>
> On Tuesday 12 February 2002 21:32, Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:
>
> > A URI is a name and a locator. A URI can have arguments
> > appended to the end of it, so it is a hyperlink and a function call
> > (which after a lot of years I've come to believe are the same thing
> > but we can argue about that).
>
> I agree with Len - argue with him and you argue with me too!
As I've mentioned a couple of times, in the general case a function call
can have dangerous side effects. Therefore one does not (in general):
* bookmark them
* email them to one's mother
* crawl them with a robot
* execute them whenever one is curious about what they do
This means that you cannot safely combine generic function calls into a
web of information that you traverse whenever you feel like it, however
you feel like it. On the Web, a hyperlink is like a function call
wherein the provider of the function promises not to do anything
potentially destructive. Therein lies a huge, er, functional difference.
Paul Prescod
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