Terminology: Thunking vs Quoting - Cat Language

Message from discussion Terminology: Thunking vs Quoting

Christopher Diggins

More options Apr 11 2007, 5:26 pm

From: "Christopher Diggins" <cdigg...@gmail.com>

Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:26:55 -0700

Local: Wed, Apr 11 2007 5:26 pm

Subject: Re: Terminology: Thunking vs Quoting

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> I think so, thanks, Christopher.

My pleasure. I appreciate your interest.

> I just looked at the write-up on the interpreter, and I think what
> you refer to as a value is really the CatStack object. It seems
> that the CatStack object can be one of three items: Literals,
> Function Names, or Quotations. This makes things a little
> clearer.

> It also seems that the [ starts what I would call "defered execution"
> mode until ] is encountered. So if function f is [ 5 ], [ f ] is
> [ [ 5 ] ] and
> not just [ 5 ], i.e. after the [ the function name f is not executed
> but
> rather the function name is left on the stack and the ] quotes the
> function.

Yes.

> Is the function name dereferenced in this case, or is it left intact
> and
> only derefernced upon execution?

This varies from release to release. 8-(
The plan is to dereference immediately.

> I also noticed a mention of an "executing stack". Is this distinct
> from
> the "normal" stack? As you may know, in PostScript there is more
> that one stack, i.e. operand stack, execution stack, dictionary stack,
> etc.

In Cat there is only one explicit stack. During parallel execution of
certain primitives other stacks may be created. In order for dip to
work, there is another stack used.

> BTW, the graphics stuff you just added looks fun. Is there any
> possibility
> of adding some simple file I/O so that arbitrary binary files can be
> read and
> written to? A little project I have in mind is to create a file
> compressor
> like WinZIP (not with GUI interface, just simple command line).

I hope to add this feature next week. I will be out of town for a few
days, and unable to work on it, but I'll bump the feature to the top
of the request list.

Cheers,
Christopher

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