Hi everyone, I've been walking around in Factors VM for a while and there is a lot of usages and references to "the retain stack." But I can't for my life figure out what its purpose is or why anyone ever would want one when there is a perfectly good data stack already available.
I only found these two posts by Slava Pestov about it: http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.factor.general/1931/match=retain+stack http://factor-language.blogspot.se/2010/07/overhauling-factors-c-library-interface.html "In the future, I intend on using GC maps at call sites of Factor words as well, instead of spilling temporary values to the retain stack; then I can eliminate the retain stack altogether, freeing up a register. After this is done the data stack will only be used to pass parameters between words, and not to store temporaries within a word. This will allow more values to be unboxed in more situations, and it will improve accuracy of compiler analyses." So the retain stack is useless? Freeing up a whole register sounds like it should be great for performance, at least on 32 bit x86. -- mvh/best regards Björn Lindqvist ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Accelerate Dev Cycles with Automated Cross-Browser Testing - For FREE Instantly run your Selenium tests across 300+ browser/OS combos. Get unparalleled scalability from the best Selenium testing platform available Simple to use. Nothing to install. Get started now for free." http://p.sf.net/sfu/SauceLabs _______________________________________________ Factor-talk mailing list Factor-talk@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/factor-talk
