Re: [Caml-list] Python's yield, Lisp's call-cc or C's setjmp/longjmp in OCaml

[Kenneth Knowles <kknowles@uclink.berkeley.edu>]

SML/NJ is a continuation-passing style compiler, so they are trivial.  It is
"possible, even in the presence of native compilation exceptions," but in a
traditiional call stack compilation it requires some sort of stack copying,
making them extremely inefficient.  (in SML/NJ every program is slower, while
continuations have almost no penalty)

There may be new tricks for avoiding copying of the whole stack, but I wouldn't
hold your breath for continuations in ocaml.

-Kenn

On Tue, Dec 16, 2003 at 03:48:11PM +0200, Ville-Pertti Keinonen wrote:
> 
> On Dec 16, 2003, at 3:13 PM, Nuutti Kotivuori wrote:
> 
> >I am wondering, does OCaml provide any variant of being able to
> >bypass the normal function call and return discipline?
> 
> There are many different things you could be referring to, some of 
> which OCaml does have (exceptions), some of which it doesn't 
> (coroutines, first-class continuations, generators etc.).
> 
> >And if not, what are the chances of something like that seeing the
> >light of day in the future? Are there any fundamental problems in
> >OCaml that would make the implementation of such a thing exceedingly
> >difficult?
> 
> First-class, capturable continuations are one of the things I often 
> wish OCaml had, but implementing them efficiently would require 
> significant changes to the execution model.
> 
> SML/NJ has efficient first-class continuations, so it's clearly 
> possible, even in the presence of native compilation and exceptions.
> 
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