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Re: function signature type checking
In article <200111290103.UAA26709@life.ai.mit.edu>, Kim Barrett
<kab@camellia.org> wrote:
> At 7:00 PM -0500 11/28/01, Bruce Hoult wrote:
> >It may be simply that it was difficult to see precisely what the
> >difficulties might *be* until there were actual implementations of the
> >language. Real compilers have to deal with function signatures, and
> >they do, but the design of how to do it while coping with all possible
> >"hair" may have been best found operationally rather than specified
> >a-priori.
>
> - The compiler writers may choose to punt on certain corner cases and
> simply
> say it isn't worth the trouble in that case, do something conservatively
> correct. I think all of the Dylan compilers I've looked at do this in
> some cases, just punting to the runtime system to correctly handle things
> once they've been concretized.
Right, and I don't see punting in some cases as being a horrid thing.
remember that this is a Lisp, not ML, and we don't *insist* on getting
everything totally nailed down and proved correct at compile time in
every case.
> - The language specification for function signatures needs to be
> written in a way that one doesn't have to be a compiler expert to
> understand it.
As opposed, say, to the DRM explanation of argument list compatability,
or "subtype"? :-)
-- Bruce
References: