(no subject)

[Dirk Herrmann <dirk@sallust.ida.ing.tu-bs.de>]

Clinton Ebadi wrote:
> > I don't care how memoization works.  I understand there are
> > optimization issues.  Optimizing isn't important to me, or
> > I would not use an interpretive language as my "extension
> > language".  If you add a disabling mechanism, then you'll
> > have the best of all worlds.  You can memoize/optimize to
> > your heart's content, and I'll disable it for my purposes.
> > If that is not practical and Guile becomes, essentially,
> > an semi-compiled language with constraints on where
> > defines may happen, then my goose will be cooked.
>
> Not to mention how Guile wouldn't be Scheme anymore. Why can't code be
> memiozied and compiled incrementally?

First, why wouldn't guile be scheme any more if conditional definitions
are disallowed?  They are disallowed by R5RS, so actually, if you
understand "being scheme" as "conforming to R5RS" then currently guile is
not scheme and disallowing conditional definitions will bring it one step
closer to "being scheme" :-)

Second, certainly can code be memoized and compiled incrementally.
However, this would have to be done every time the code was read in again,
since in an expression like (if <condition> (define <foo> <bar)) the value
of <condition> may change every time the code is read in.  That is, we
would reduce our possibility to pre-compile code.  Pre compiling code,
however, is one of our options to speed up guile's starting time (aside
from optimizing guile's module system...).

Best regards, 
Dirk Herrmann



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