🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bxs63J.BxA@exnet.co.uk> dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon) writes:
>In article <BxpprG.HKu@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> hrubin@mentor.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
>>And how would you handle cases where operations have multiple results,
>>of different types?  This should have been in all programming languages
>>on day 2, and is now only clumsily handled in some.  How would you 
>>handle simple operators which those who produced the languages either
>>did not understand, did not think important, or just plain ignored?	

			......................

>Or you put these features in the library.  (Just like RISC.)

>Which is what C does.

>I think even C is starting to bloat, but it is still quite honest in
>relegating special features---that won't be used/available on *nearly
>every* machine or in *a lot* of code---to the libraries.

>So, returning multiple answers in C is easy if ugly.  Use pointer
>arguments, or return a structure or point to one.  It needn't be
>expensive at run time.

But it is.  The operations often use register arguments and the results
are wanted in registers.  To avoid real problems with separate compilations,
it would be necessary to have a substantial inline library, which is really
a part of the language installation.  I have not seen any implementation of
C which allows a register struct, although I suspect that there are such.
But if the registers wanted are not adjacent, I can see a real problem.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
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