Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!kadie From: kadie@cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme Subject: Re: what do you use continuations for? Message-ID: Date: 16 Feb 91 06:51:11 GMT References: <11173@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> Sender: news@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (News) Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Lines: 24 In <11173@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> oliver@karakorum.berkeley.edu (Oliver Sharp) writes: >I have a question for the group: what do you use cwcc for? [...] Here is what I would like to use them for: One of the fun things to do with Lisp is to modify it to have the features of other languages. For example, rewriting can be added, pattern matching, functional programming, object-oriented programming, etc. The great thing about lisp is that after the extensions are added they become an (almost) seamless part of the language. But what if you want to add nondeterminism/backtracking? With continuations it is easy. Without continuations, the addition of backtracking is very ugly. [I want backtracking because many algorithms, especially those that search, can be written very concisely if nondeterminism is allowed] -- Carl Kadie -- kadie@cs.uiuc.edu -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign