From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: gnuist006@gmail.com Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: The fundamental concept of continuations Date: Tue, 09 Oct 2007 19:37:53 -0000 Organization: http://groups.google.com Message-ID: <1191958673.182295.207190@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com> References: <1191906949.179197.217470@57g2000hsv.googlegroups.com> <470b1b30$0$11022$4c368faf@roadrunner.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: sea.gmane.org 1191958927 20818 80.91.229.12 (9 Oct 2007 19:42:07 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@sea.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:42:07 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Tue Oct 09 21:42:05 2007 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1IfKxh-0000W2-Sh for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 09 Oct 2007 21:41:50 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1IfKxc-0007FN-B1 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:41:44 -0400 Original-Path: shelby.stanford.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!postnews.google.com!22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme, comp.lang.lisp, comp.lang.functional, gnu.emacs.help, comp.lang.python Original-Lines: 39 Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 75.30.151.83 Original-X-Trace: posting.google.com 1191958673 18066 127.0.0.1 (9 Oct 2007 19:37:53 GMT) Original-X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Original-NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:37:53 +0000 (UTC) In-Reply-To: User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.8.1.7) Gecko/20070914 Firefox/2.0.0.7,gzip(gfe),gzip(gfe) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: 22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com; posting-host=75.30.151.83; posting-account=ps2QrAMAAAA6_jCuRt2JEIpn5Otqf_w0 Original-Xref: shelby.stanford.edu comp.lang.scheme:74413 comp.lang.lisp:230832 comp.lang.functional:62608 gnu.emacs.help:152772 comp.lang.python:515601 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:48272 Archived-At: On Oct 9, 5:50 am, Matthias Blume wrote: > "." writes: > > On Tue, 09 Oct 2007 05:15:49 +0000, gnuist006 wrote: > > >> Again I am depressed to encounter a fundamentally new concept that I > >> was all along unheard of. Its not even in paul graham's book where i > >> learnt part of Lisp. Its in Marc Feeley's video. > > >> Can anyone explain: > > >> (1) its origin > > One of the lambda papers, I think. I don't remember which. > > This is a common misconception. There is very little that > originated from the "lambda" papers. But they did a marvelous job at > promoting some of the ideas that existed in the PL community for > years. > > As for the concept of continuations, there is Scott and Strachey's > work on denotational semantics, and there is Landin's J operator. > (There's probably more that I am forgetting right now.) > > >> (6) any good readable references that explain it lucidly ? > > One of the most lucid explanations of definitional interpreters -- > including those that are based on continuation-passing -- are > explained in J. Reynolds' famous 1971 "Definitional Interpreters for > Higher-Order Functions" paper. (It has been re-published in 1998 in > HOSC.) The paper also explains how to perform defunctionalization, > which can be seen as a way to compile (and even hand-compile) > higher-order programs. > > Matthias Matthias, thanks for the reference, but I dont have access to an engineering library. I would appreciate, if you have access to paper/ scanner or electronic copy to help many of us out, you are not just helping me but many will thank you.