Nominal References

A nominal reference is a kind of accessor that is used to refer to the value or type of a nominally identified member that has been declared in the lexical scope in which the reference is placed. Nominal references are accessors that do not start with a dot ..

For instance, in the following snippet:

x = 'top-secret'
o = {
    key = x
}

x (the value of o.key) is a nominal reference to the value of the member identified as x (which turns out to be the 'top-secret' string). To summarize, here the value of o.key is 'top-secret'.

Note

A reference that is not found in the lexical scope abrutply halts the execution of the interpreter with this informative message:

error: could not find <accessor> in context:
at <row>:<col>:
    <accessor>
    ^

In a similar way, a reference that is found multiple times in the lexical scope abrutply halts the execution of the interpreter with this informative message:

error: found multiple candidates for <accessor>:
    at <row>:<col>:
        <accessor>
        ^
note: candidates are:
    at <row>:<col>:
        <identifier> = ''
        ^
    at <row>:<col>:
        <identifier>: Result = {
        ^
    .
    .
    .