Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Partial application in C
Message-ID: <1988Jul8.033348.17432@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <3353@cognos.UUCP> <619@goofy.megatest.UUCP>, <429@uwovax.uwo.ca>
Date: Fri, 8 Jul 88 03:33:48 GMT

> Besides, I thought that self-modifying code was (a) extremely difficult
> to write, and (b) considered poor programming practice.

Don't think of self-modifying code, which is indeed an abomination.  Think
of code that generates other code at execution time.  For example, the
fastest implementations of RasterOp generate custom-built code at run time,
and then execute it, when the rasters being manipulated are big.  Various
incremental compiler/interpreter hybrids are another obvious example --
done well, dynamic code generation can give near-compiler speeds without
sacrificing the advantages of an interpreter.