Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!ucsd!ogicse!milton!milton.u.washington.edu!jsp From: jsp@glia.biostr.washington.edu. (Jeff Prothero) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp.x Subject: Re: xlftab.c:funtab[] & other questions Message-ID: Date: 20 Nov 90 23:49:53 GMT References: <8457@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> Sender: news@milton.u.washington.edu Distribution: comp Organization: Biological Structure, U of Wash, Seattle Lines: 44 In-reply-to: toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM's message of 20 Nov 90 17:08:28 GMT In article <8457@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes: In article jsp@glia.biostr.washington.edu (Jeff Prothero) writes: >>What's the point of image save/restore? Should saved images be >>portable between machines or versions? >Saved images are not portable between machines because these are binary >files and the representations can change (big vs little endian, wordsize, etc). >They are also not portable if funtab changes. Yeah... notice, my question was *should* saved images be portable. Do people save images only for an afternoon, or do they habitually archive them and come back a year later...? >>Would it be hard/pointless to write code to convert the xlisp >>state into initialized C header files, so that the xlisp state >>could be portably compiled into an application? >The state is mainly a large initialized linked list which can not be >statically declared in C (you need to execute code to set the links). Is this obviously true? You can initialize an array of pointers to functions in C. (Remember funtab[]? :-) As far as I know, you can initialize pointers to anything in C. Is it nonportable in practice to initialize an array of pointers with the pointers pointing various places into the array...? I don't think my compiler would have any problems with this... >IMHO it would also be pointless since applications should be distributed >as xlisp source rather than C files (what if the user doesn't have a C >compiler?). I'm sensitive to this. But loading a lot of source text in can slow things down. Loading an imagefile is one way to speed things up. Having the lisp image precompiled in would be another... >Tom Almy >toma@tekgvs.labs.tek.com >Standard Disclaimers Apply -- jsp@glia.biostr.washington.edu (Jeff Prothero) jsp@u.washington.edu (If above bounces.) Biological Structure Graphics Lab, U Washington