Re: Age of Continuations?

[Neel Krishnaswami <address@hidden>]

Dan Sugalski writes:
>
> Here's a quick question--I figure this is probably the best place to
> ask, as the web's been somewhat unhelpful.  How old are
> continuations as a Lisp language feature? I've got references that
> indicate they're going on 30 years old or more, but nothing
> definitive, and I admit my Lisp library's somewhat lacking.

You will definitely want to read John C. Reynold's "The Discoveries of
Continuations", which is a historical account of how continuations
were gradually invented.

<http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/reynolds93discoveries.html>

This paper is mostly about the theoretical end, so someone else will
have to take up how call/cc ended up in Scheme.

-- 
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@alum.mit.edu