Re: A delicious thought

[Richard Brooksby <richard@harlequin.co.uk>]

Alan Watson <alan@oldp.astro.wisc.edu> wrote:

> You can't do cd et al. properly in the way I suggested, as rc does
> not keep all of its state in the environment...
   :
> Of course, we could have rc realize its entire state in the
> environment, but I hear the wolves baying over in the es list, so I
> won't even suggest this.

What you are suggesting is just that rc should be continuation rather
than stack based.  I doubt that even the es designers contemplated
this option, although it would make a very interesting shell.

However, since the Unix process model is stack based (process
parent/child relationships are just like a stack) it wouldn't mesh
very well.

A nicer thing, in my humble opinion, would be to include a foreign
function interface and allow dynamic linking to libraries.  One could
then import Clib and make system calls directly.
---
Richard Brooksby <richard@harlequin.co.uk>
ML Project / Symbolic Processing Division / Harlequin
+44 223 872522