Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!ucbvax!decwrl!megatest!djones From: djones@megatest.UUCP (Dave Jones) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c Subject: Re: Partial application in C Message-ID: <619@goofy.megatest.UUCP> Date: 24 Jun 88 19:32:22 GMT References: <3353@cognos.UUCP> Organization: Megatest Corporation, San Jose, Ca Lines: 23 From article <3353@cognos.UUCP>, by jimp@cognos.uucp (Jim Patterson): > there are machines that don't allow you to execute data as > code. So this guy goes to the doctor, see, and he wiggles his arm and says, " Doc, my arm hurts when I do this." So the doctor says, "Then don't *DO* that!" When I published a runtime linking loader a while back, there were some who mentioned that on some machines you could not "execute data." My immediate reaction was to say, "Then don't *USE* those kinds of machines!" But of course, you may have to. It's good to know that the restriction exits, although I will continue to use dynamic loading, because I have applications that absolutely scream for it. I began to wonder why such a restriction might be deemed necessary. Was it Big Brother engineering? -- Thou shalt not modify thy executable, for it is a Bad Thing. -- Or is there a valid technical reason behind it? I can see one possible rationale: You can have 128KB of memory in a sixteen bit machine, divided evenly between data and code, if you use all the addresses for both kinds of memory.