Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: Variable function names
Message-ID: <6885@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 20 Dec 87 00:30:20 GMT
References: <973@russell.STANFORD.EDU> <47000027@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 15

In article <47000027@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> mcdonald@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
>I realize that, somewhere, there might be a machine that CAN'T,

Separation of Instruction and Data space is enforced by a large number of
modern computer systems.  It is generally considered to be a Good Thing,
since it prevents program errors from being quite as disastrous as they
might be were valid code to be overwritten with random data while running.

I won't give you a list of such systems, as there doesn't seem to be any
point in an enumeration.

It is possible to implement a fairly fast interpretive language within
this architectural constraint.  I have implemented a few of these, and
you can find an example in Kernighan & Pike's "The UNIX Programming
Environment" (the chapter on the "hoc" language).