Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!texbell!sugar!ficc!peter
From: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Self-modifying code
Message-ID: <6501@ficc.uu.net>
Date: 11 Oct 89 13:57:10 GMT
References: <1080@mipos3.intel.com> <6471@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
Reply-To: peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva)
Organization: Society for Prevention of Cruelty to GOTOs
Lines: 11

One use of self-modifying code that still survives is total balls-to-the-wall
block operations, such as BitBlts. There was a discussion of hardware
graphics coprocessors where someone (maybe Henry Spencer, as the leading
opponent of the beasts) brought this up. I have not seen such code myself,
but it involved generating the BitBlt subroutine optimised for the operation
desired on the fly and then executing it.
-- 
Peter da Silva, *NIX support guy @ Ferranti International Controls Corporation.
Biz: peter@ficc.uu.net, +1 713 274 5180. Fun: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com. `-_-'
                                                                           'U`
Quote: Structured Programming is a discipline -- not a straitjacket.