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Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support

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From	Kaz Kylheku <157-073-9834@kylheku.com>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support
Date	Tue, 10 Apr 2018 18:38:52 +0000 (UTC)
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On 2018-04-10, Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> wrote:
> Yet, for all that complexity, "C combines the power of assembly language
> with the flexibility of assembley language"!

Not so; C provides no portable way to inspect the stack or machine
registers. Writing a precisely-tracing garbage collector which can
look for root pointers in the stack is possible in assembly language;
only a conservative approach is feasible in anything remotely resembling
portable C.

Assembly languages are predictable; for instance, they have defined
behaviors on integer overflow.

Decent quality instruction sets architectures provide ways to catch
an exception in a handler which can precisely re-start the program from
the faulting point after doing some fixup. Almost anything can be
treated in a way that assures safety: illegal instruction, division by zero.

In assembly languages, a pointer value held in a register doesn't become
"indeterminate" just because it was passed to some free()-like function.
(And other such nonsense fictions.)

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Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2018-04-10 16:11 +0100
  Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support "Derek M. Jones" <derek@_NOSPAM_knosof.co.uk> - 2018-04-10 16:56 +0100
  Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2018-04-10 16:04 +0000
    Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support "Derek M. Jones" <derek@_NOSPAM_knosof.co.uk> - 2018-04-10 23:14 +0100
      Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support Martin Ward <martin@gkc.org.uk> - 2018-04-13 13:55 +0100
  Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2018-04-10 11:04 -0700
  Re: language design after Algol 60, was Add nested-function support Kaz Kylheku <157-073-9834@kylheku.com> - 2018-04-10 18:38 +0000

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