Harvard vs. vonNeuman

From: Paul Koning <pkoning_at_equallogic.com>
Date: Tue Sep 28 17:09:34 2004

>>>>> "Dwight" == Dwight K Elvey <dwight.elvey_at_amd.com> writes:

>> From: "David V. Corbin" <dvcorbin_at_optonline.net>
>>>>> >>> Can you create self modifying code in any high level
>>>>> language, the kind of code where the application program
>>>>> actually changes it's own instructions?
>>>>>
>>>>> I know in C it is possible to pass an address of a function to
>>>>> a function, that's not really what I mean.
>>>>>
>> Actually this is (sort of) becoming more common. One exciting
>> feature of a new platform by the software vendor who shall not be
>> named, is that the compiler is actually part of the runtime. This
>> means that any program can write source code to a string (or other
>> structure) and compile and execute it!!!!!!
>>

 Dwight> Hi It was possible to do in early BASIC's that allowed a
 Dwight> machine code subroutine calls. One input the code as data and
 Dwight> then called it. Both LISP and Forth have the ability to, by
 Dwight> program, compile code and then execute it. It is done more
 Dwight> often in LISP.

Good point about Forth.

I wouldn't say LISP does it more -- whenever you feed code to a Forth
system, it's doing this, so it does it all the time every time...

      paul
Received on Tue Sep 28 2004 - 17:09:34 BST