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Suggestions for Maintaining "Object" State?

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg78331] Suggestions for Maintaining "Object" State?
• From: "Carey Sublette" <careysub at earthling.net>
• Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2007 04:32:26 -0400 (EDT)

I am starting to develop a fairly complex simulation using Mathematica 6 and 
am confronting a basic issue that I am unsure how best to resolve: "How to 
preserve the state of an object?"

Physical objects represented in a simulation have internal state that is 
preserved and affects how they respond to stimulus from the simulation 
environment.

Possible ways of implementing this behavior includes creating modules 
representing objects and:
*  exporting state to the session (or other enclosing scope) as a list of 
values, which either exists as a global variable or is passed in as a 
parameter;
* using UpValues or Tags to assign object state to symbols(?).

At the moment the objects in the simulation have a 1-to-1 relationship, 
there is only one of each type, which simplifies the problem, though in the 
future I may need to maintain state for multiple objects of the same type.

Does anyone have recommendations for how to do this, optimized either for 
convenience or efficiency?