Partial application in C

[David Collier-Brown]

In article <429 at uwovax.uwo.ca> 16012_3045 at uwovax.uwo.ca (Paul Gomme) writes:
[discussion of execute-only code segments]
>	Besides, I thought that self-modifying code was (a) extremely difficult
>to write, and (b) considered poor programming practice.

  Yes, it is and it is.

  What is really wanted here is architectural (and language) support
of the "generate and execute" paradigm, which grew out of the old
self-modifying-code techniques when
	a) people started using HLLs like lisp, and
	b) people started trying to deal with complex/unconstrained
	   problems.
  What you tend to see now is something like the "sort generators"
of the self-modifying-code era, except they're generators for all
sorts of special-purpose functions.

  The architectural support should include the ability to write code
to a logical segment, then make it executable (and normally
read-only!), as mentioned early in this thread.
  The language support ranges from a facility to call something
which one has a pointer to (C), to integrated compiler/interpreter
sets (lisp, prolog, etc)...  For obvious reasons, persons wanting to
write the latter in the former want to be able to create such
pointers, preferably without requiring language/OS changes.

 --dave ((lisp has (too many) (parentheses))) c-b
-- 
 David Collier-Brown.  {mnetor yunexus utgpu}!geac!daveb
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