NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/comp/sys/transput/1198

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-17 | 1.7 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!mcsun!uknet!comlab.ox.ac.uk!michael
From: [e-mail] (& Stevens)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.transputer
Subject: Re: IS Occam3 recursive?
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 16 Nov 92 18:55:58 GMT
Organization: Dept. Engineering Science, Oxford University, UK
Lines: 35
In-reply-to: [e-mail]'s message of 13 Nov 92 14:01:57 GMT

Now the arguments about recursion and OCCAM have been going a while I
though I would make a quick summary.

FOR recursion:
    1. Recursion is mathematically elegent. Serious software
engineering requires it.
    2. Code generation isn't hard. Handle the stack extension is possible.
If it can be done for C, you can do it for OCCAM.
    3. You don't need to use it. If you want to be able to
predetermine memory usage at compile time don't recurese.
    4. Why single out memory as the single resource that should be
predetermined at compile time. Time is another resource that runs out,
and so does disk space.

AGAINST recursion:
    1. OCCAM 2 doesn't do it.
    2. Its not implemented in OCCAM 2.
    3. Thats all I can think of, but I am sure it has something to
do with OCCAM 2.

Personally I think the arguments against have it :-)

Ok enough humour, how about the even tricker issue of dynamic memory
allocation. Does OCCAM 3 need it as part of the language? Should OCCAM
3 have type safe pointers? Or should we be content with INT32 and
library procedures to allocate memory?

Would all this overburned OCCAM and turn it into yet another hacked up
language like C?

Michael Stevens, Robotics Research Group,Dept of Engineering Science,Oxford,UK
INTERNET: [e-mail]
--
Michael Stevens, Robotics Research Group,Dept of Engineering Science,Oxford,UK
INTERNET: [e-mail]