Path: csiph.com!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!not-for-mail
From: Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.python
Subject: Re: (Execution) Termination bit, Alternation bit.
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2015 14:44:59 +1100
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On Sun, Dec 20, 2015 at 1:27 PM, Dennis Lee Bieber
<wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Dec 2015 18:56:17 +0100, "Skybuck Flying"
> <skybuck2000@hotmail.com> declaimed the following:
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>I'd like to see instruction execution enhanced with the following two ideas:
>>
>>1. A termination bit, and a terminator pointer.
>>2. A alternation bit, and a alternate pointer.
>>
>         Don't see it here... You've just enabled leaving lots of corrupted data
> structures in the system... (Imagine your "termination" branch is taken
> after a call that allocated a 500MB block of memory, but before the call
> that returns that memory to the system).

Honestly, I wouldn't bother responding to this kind of thing here on
python-list. There's nothing about Python in the entire post. It's a
CPU-level feature that "might" be able to be adopted eventually by the
implementation of languages like Python. If I were to hazard a guess,
I would say that a feature like this would migrate first through CPU
discussions, then through C compilers, then to PyPy, and finally might
end up in CPython, if it got widespread use. But until it gets at
least to the PyPy level, it's not of much interest here. (Even then,
it'll be an obscure feature on a very specific platform, and probably
of only cursory interest.)

If this really IS worth doing, there'll be OS programmers all over it
for years before it ever affects Python.

ChrisA