Re: [OT] Re: Question on mutability of argument lists

[Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com>]

On Thu 20 Mar 2014 11:06, Marco Maggi <marco.maggi-ipsu@poste.it> writes:

>   Something  similar can  be done  for return  values[1]; in
> Vicare every function call site has 2 return points: one for
> single return value; the other for 0, 2, more return values.
> One return  point goes  on with  the computation,  the other
> raises an exception.
>
> [1]  Ashley and  Dybvig.   "An  Efficient Implementation  of
> Multiple Return Values in  Scheme".  Proceedings of the 1994
> ACM Conference on Lisp  and Functional Programming, 140-149,
> Orlando, June 1994.

Incidentally I think this is not such a nice approach -- multiple-value
returns kill the return-branch buffer.  I suspect this is a very 1994
strategy.  For example, it's common to call a function and discard its
arguments.  This is trivial with a single return location.  With MV you
miss the return-branch buffer and you still play jump games.  The
single-value return is also very easy -- just check the
number-of-return-values register (or, if values are on the stack, check
the stack pointer) and branch to error if you didn't get the right
number.  Branch prediction helps here.

Andy
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