Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!sco!seanf
From: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Pointers as 3-tuples (Re: JLG's flogging of horses (was Re: Relationship between C and C++))
Message-ID: <5666@scolex.sco.COM>
Date: 13 Apr 90 06:25:06 GMT
References: <20145@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> <14340@lambda.UUCP>
Sender: news@sco.COM
Reply-To: seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan)
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Lines: 26


In article <14340@lambda.UUCP> jlg@lambda.UUCP (Jim Giles) writes:
>No.  And I'll test your claim right here.  Using C, with you 3-tuple
>idea, write the following routines: brk(), sbrk(), malloc(), and
>free().  You won't succeed.  This is because _at_least_one_ of these
>routines has to have direct explicit access to the internal representations
>of your 3-tuples (something has to be responsible for setting them).

Even in current implementations, such things either a) are written in
assembly (i.e., brk is a system call in SysV), or b) call some other routine
which is written in assembly (e.g., malloc calls sbrk calls brk, which is
written in assembly).  Tell me, is all of the FORTRAN stuff you're so fond
of going to be written in FORTRAN?  Somehow, I doubt it.

>your
>3-tuple prevents me from doing so with C's pointers,

You *can't* write brk in C only, as far as I know!  You can get awfully
close, but it's still kinda difficult.

-- 
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Sean Eric Fagan  | "It's a pity the universe doesn't use [a] segmented 
seanf@sco.COM    |  architecture with a protected mode."
uunet!sco!seanf  |         -- Rich Cook, _Wizard's Bane_
(408) 458-1422   | Any opinions expressed are my own, not my employers'.