Re: continuation and multi-threading

[Miroslav Silovic <silovic at zesoi dot fer dot hr>]

Mikael Djurfeldt <mdj@mdj.nada.kth.se> writes:

> > If this works, I don't think I have to do anything special - just to
> > implement a few additional VM instructions.  Why do I need to break
> > the stack into frame objects?
> 
> Don't ask me.  :)

Because that way you can get continuations to perform -fast-. :)
(i.e. on par with catch/throw &co)

While this isn't too useful (since Guile already has catch/throw),
there are things that are pretty hard to implement without
continuations. For instance, implicit backtracking (you create
something that looks like a list, but is treated as a single element
of the list, and looped through by backtracking). For this sort of
thing, you either have to aggressively transform the code in a
purpose-specific way, or implement fast continuations and then just
use them as panacea.

Of course, it's easier to say 'fast continuations' than to actually
implement them.

-- 
How to eff the ineffable?