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4 points by stefano 6104 days ago | link | parent

You could try transforming

(fn (x) (list (fn () x) (fn (v) (set x v))))

to

  (fn (x)
    (let x (cons x nil)
      (list
        (fn () (car x))
        (fn (v) (set-car x v)))))
This way the adress of the cons cell x isn't shared, but the cell itself is shared. The compiler would do this transformation automatically.


3 points by almkglor 6104 days ago | link

Done and on the git.

Some notes:

1) I use a new structure, the sharedvar, which doesn't correspond to any Arc structure. See the other post which had me blinking stupidly at stefano's transformation before I realized how cool it was: http://arclanguage.com/item?id=5784

2) This new structure is untyped (i.e doesn't have type tags, unlike the pair and symbol structures). I intend to make shared variables "seamless" to the upper Arc though, so this should be fine...

3) My original name for this structure was closure-settable, which I shortened to sharedvar instead.

PS f34r my new gravatar

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1 point by stefano 6104 days ago | link

Wow. You implemented it very quickly.

Making the new structure untyped shouldn't create problems, but it could make development difficult: if you have a bug in the transformer or in something related to it, you'll probably get a Seg. fault error instead of a clean "Not a sharedvar" error. The check could then be removed when the code is released.

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1 point by almkglor 6104 days ago | link

Hmm. So far the transformation seems correct anyway; and really, the transform is quite simple and appears mathematically correct. Also, because of the way the compile-file driver is structured, it would be possible to remove/replace each individual transform.

Which reminds me, we need to have a proper error continuation too.

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2 points by almkglor 6104 days ago | link

Huh.

blinks stupidly

Cool.

Why didn't I....

Cool.

Blink

Cool.

Edit: Okay, I managed to snap out of shock.

The base idea is pretty good, although the 'cons cell (which is composed of a type id, a car pointer, and a cdr pointer) can be replaced with a smaller "closure-settable" cell, which would be an untyped object composed of a single pointer:

  (fn (x)
    ; % means it's a primitive
    (let x (%closure-settable x)
      (list
        (fn () (%closure-settable-read x))
        (fn (v) (%closure-settable-write x v)))))
Because the closure variable abstraction is not accessible from the high-level Arc language, the closure-settable doesn't need to be typed tagged

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