[Sablevm-user] About closures...

[Etienne M. G. <eg...@j-...>]

Hi Brent.

If memory serves me right, in fact what you want is to be able to "save"
a snapshot of the stack, then, at a later time, be able to resume
computation starting with this snapshot.

Do you really need to open the access to the internal VM representation
to implement this?  I mean:  would simply providing two new bytecodes,
say NewClosure/UseClosure, be enough?  As I said before, I am not very
knowledgeable about FP runtime systems. e.g. I do not know tha answer to
questions like: Does the closure only include the current thread's
stack, or does it need a full copy of the overall VM state?  How do you
resume a closure: on a new thread? If not, what happens with the current
stack? etc.

I think that, in general,  providing new bytecodes, for extended
functionality, is better than opening up the internal state, in that it
helps shielding away applications from any specific VM implementation.

Just some thoughts;-)

Etienne
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Etienne M. Gagnon, M.Sc.                     e-mail: eg...@j-...
Author of SableVM:                             http://www.sablevm.org/
----------------------------------------------------------------------