Re: [Jscheme-user] Serializing closures

[Toby A. <tob...@pe...>]

On Wed, Mar 03, 2004 at 02:49:59PM -0500, Timothy John Hickey wrote:
> I'd like to see the patch, but it wasn't attached to my email...  I am
> interested in getting serialization to work.... and specifying
> precisely what its semantics is....

Yeah, sorry about that, I've sent it in a separate reply.  The semantics
are tricky to specify.  What I've implemented is the behaviour I happen
to want, but it has the slightly strange side effect of introducing new
top level bindings to satisfy free references on deserialization.  I see
two alternatives:

1) assume that the bindings exist and generate an error if they don't,
   just as if the closure was defined normally,

2) just use the snapshotted values and avoid polluting the top level.

I think what I've implemented is more useful in general, and it
certainly is for me.

Toby.

> > What happens is that any free references in the closure have their
> > values snapshotted on serialization and these snapshot values are
> > used to reestablish the top level bindings if none exist on
> > deserialization.  If the appropriate binding do exists then the free
> > references are hooked up as I would expect (but you may not).
> > 
> > Anyway, I thought this was pretty cool.  Is there any interest in
> > including this patch in the official sources?
> > 
> > Toby.