Subj : Re: Controlling evaluation of an expression
To   : netscape.public.mozilla.jseng
From : alanwli
Date : Tue Dec 07 2004 01:58 pm

Thank you for the input.

It's not difficult to imagine the following scenario for an Java
application that processes data for all students at a school.  The
application allows a specific javascript function to customize
additional processing for each student:

function processStudent()
{
student.tuition = student.tuition + 1000
}

The application will do its own processing for each student, then
associate it to the javascript variable student for the custom
processing.  After looping through all of the students, then it may
want to allow a "summary" step that occurs at the end:

function processAllStudents()
{
print Average( student.tuition )
}

In the context of the a host function Average, student.tuition doesn't
mean the tuition of an individual student.  Rather you would want the
un-evaluated expression to be passed back to the Java application,
where it can total all of the student tuition, then compute the
average.

I understand that from a technical standpoint that you can change the
syntax to fix this, as suggested by zwetan.  However, it'll no longer
intuitive to the end-user who will be adding the customization code.

.