Re: [Muq-bugs] 'list' function nonexistent?

[Scott A C. <sc...@cs...>]

On 02 Aug 2002 13:36:23 -0500, Cynbe ru Taren <cy...@mu...> writes:

> 
> The Muq design is 12 years old now: At this point, I'm
> inclined to put more stress on programmer convenience and
> less on space and time efficiency.  With gigabytes of ram
> now routine in cheap PCs, does anyone really care about
> disk-basing?  Much of the coding effort of the Muq

I wouldn't worry about diskbasing objects containing references, but
diskbasing blobs (binary objects containing no references) might still
be considered a win. You get almost all of the simplicity of an
exclusively in-RAM GC, and you get most of the storage benefits of
diskbasing. If someone has 4gb of stuff, its probably safe to say that
95% of it is going to be in the form of large blobs?

Then lightweight proxy objects for each such external object.. Say
16-24 bytes bytes. 4 bytes object-location-id. 4 bytes size. 4 bytes
for in-memory location. (null if not in memory). 4 bytes for maintance
(track dirtyness, track usage to identify when not used.), maybe some
hashbits?  

> Just for fun, I've also been writing simple C++ hacks to
> generate raytraced images of hierarchical cubic spline
> surfaces via RenderMan descriptions.  Great
> instant-gratification programming! Something I don't do
> enough of. I can now make absolutely marvelous random blobs.
> :) This might also wind up in Muq eventually -- it is based

Got pictures? 


Scott