🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4av6pn$8im@natasha.rmii.com>,
jcoffin@rmii.com (Jerry Coffin) wrote:
>torek@elf.bsdi.com (Chris Torek) wrote:
>
>> I looked for any sort of limit on recursion depth and found
>> nothing.  

>As far as I can tell, there's no guarantee about anything that would
>typically involve stack-size.  
...
>and add:
>
>- ability to call functions having any combination of arguments and
>parameters totalling 3 variables of any type, to a total depth of 511,
>not including the initial invocation of `main'.
>(all three requirements applying only to hosted implementations.)

511 sounds high, much higher than normal programs use.  That may
exclude small implementations.  Also, 3 variables of any type is
a loose requirement: is there any limit of the size of my struct
variable used as an argument?

>Under the present rules, you could make a pretty good case that no
>program that uses a variable is strictly conforming, since there's no
>guarantee as to whether any amount of storage is supported in the
>storage class used by that variable.

Good point.  The problem seems to be defining some guaranteed numbers
and determining how they apply.  In this scenario, do I loose all
guarantees because I have 2 parameters, but need a local variable,
even though the call depth is 3 instead of 511?  

Maybe a more practical way of handling this situation (outside the
standard) is to specify the amount of memory required to run a
particular program is some/all cases.  This, of course, is somewhat
difficult to specify for portable programs because of varying sizes of
variable types.