On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:19:16 -0500, John Gilmore wrote: > >pointer >procedure-pointer >program-pointer > >are the poster children for this dubious practice. I know what the >differences among tgherm are, but if pointer had not been misconceived >in the beginning they would have been unnecessary. (There is no >better case for associating ancillary information with a pointer than >there is for associating it with a signed fullword.) > In languages of the vintage of ALGOL-60, Pascal, (PL/I?), a procedure reference also identifies the dynamic instance of the statically enclosing stack frame at the point at which the reference was defined. This is such ancillary information.
This was perhaps an embryonic attempt at object-oriented design. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
