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Building Programming Language Interpreters
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Different languages have different ways to represent values and how those values are addressed by variables. In some languages, this is just a symbolic mechanism, while in other languages, this extends to managing the life cycle of the values.
When more complex data structures need to be represented, programming languages introduce a different category of value. A “container,” for example, is a value that holds other values. In some languages, such as Python, containers are built into the language itself, and there’s very little space for creating alternative implementations for those. In other languages, such as C++, containers are entirely implemented in the language itself, and the user has access to all the facilities necessary to make containers as efficient as the ones shipped by the Standard Library.
The mutability of values, however, can place significant constraints on how containers can operate. For instance, hash maps need the hash value...
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