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From: leichter@yale-com.UUCP (Jerry Leichter)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: Self-modifying code - (nf)
Message-ID: <2680@yale-com.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 8-Jan-84 16:44:16 EST
Article-I.D.: yale-com.2680
Posted: Sun Jan  8 16:44:16 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Jan-84 04:39:39 EST
References: uiucdcs.4769
Lines: 11

BTW, the most widespread occurences of self-modifying code I know of are in
that little-appreciated language, TECO.  It is quite common to build code on
the fly (need much less in more recent dialects, which allow q-register
references inside such things as file-name specifications - but there are
still many examples).  It is also sometimes useful to modify code.  I've
used things like a pre-processor that, depending on whether you wanted logging
from the main code or not, took the main code and left it alone or actually
physically removed the logging code.  This was worthwhile because TECO is
interpreted and not very fast, so you didn't want the overhead - which was in
an inner loop - in "production" code.  Rarely needed, but handy...
								-- Jerry