Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!mentor.cc.purdue.edu!l.cc.purdue.edu!cik
From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: entry at other than main (was want to know)
Summary: Interpreters are expensive TO RUN
Message-ID: <1517@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 20 Aug 89 12:40:57 GMT
References: <8487@bsu-cs.bsu.edu> <2980@solo9.cs.vu.nl> <182@sunquest.UUCP> <19164@mimsy.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 25

In article <19164@mimsy.UUCP>, chris@mimsy.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
> In many articles many people write this, that, and the other argument
> for or against `main()' as the program entry point.

			.........................

> 	d) program begins at any function (Lisp, APL, etc).
> 
> At any rate, you can, right now, go out and *buy* approach (d) for C:
> there are at least two C interpreters on the market.  If you want it,
> go pay for it.

Except for debugging purposes, or very small jobs, interpreters are too
expensive to run.  I would not want to replace my loader with an interpreter
if it were free.

The problem is NOT a C problem, except as the cc compiler invokes the
loader if requested to.  It is a linkage problem, and language designers
must be conderned with this.  If the linkage part of the loader were
slightly changed, the problem would completely disappear.  This is a
small part of the linkage problem.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet, UUCP)