[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: job control for the es shell
Mikael Eklund wrote:
> I remember what Paul said about jobcontrol many years ago. He felt it
> didn't fit in with the functional programming style of es. He wanted
> to add a feature called `first class continuation' before jobcontrol
> could be added the right way.
First class continuations would be nice, but I don't think they are
essential for an interactive shell*. But tail recursion would be really
nice.
> Since then, I've had an idea that each internal command sequence (also
> possibly containing external commands) should run as its own thread.
> If I ever find the time to really learn threaded programming, this
> would be a nice project. :-)
This would be very hard, because of numerous global data structures,
which then must be properly locked. And what would be the benefits of
multithreading? IMHO, in a not too specialized programming language, the
default behaviour should be the serial execution of successive commands.
Otherwise
~> x=Hello World!; echo $x
would give unpredictable results.
Greetings, Olaf
Footnotes:
* Standard disclaimer: Job control isn't essential, as well. But I want
to have it :-)
--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
I Dipl. Phys. Olaf Rogalsky Institut f. Theo. Physik I I
I Tel.: 09131 8528440 Univ. Erlangen-Nuernberg I
I Fax.: 09131 8528444 Staudtstrasse 7 B3 I
I rogalsky@theorie1.physik.uni-erlangen.de D-91058 Erlangen I
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+