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continuation terminology



    Date: Sun, 16 Dec 84 17:27:40 est
    From: Chris Haynes <cth%indiana.csnet at csnet-relay.arpa>

    We object strongly to the use of the term "escape procedure"...

My only objection to the terms "continuation" and "continuation object"
is that the presence of fluids and/or UNWIND-PROTECT mean that the thing
created by the user-visible CATCH or CONTINUE or CALL-... or whatever is
more than just a continuation, since it implicitly includes a reference
to the dynamic state.  There is a low-level thing which really does give
you a continuation, but I expect that the mechanism which does the right
thing with fluids would be the normal one used by users.

I don't have any new alternative term to propose, however.

Of course, we decided not to decide whether or not the essential
scheme's continuation procuration combinator dealt properly with fluids,
since essential scheme doesn't deal with fluids at all.  It seems to me
that any fluid mechanism whatsoever must distinguish between
continuations and continuation+state things.  As things are, my guess is
that it would be up to the implementor which of these two things the
essential dialect's CALL-... gives you.  (This might be the wrong thing,
but I won't argue that position here - this message is already too long.)

(By the way, no Lisp has never had escape procedures per se; the usual
CATCH/THROW mechanism doesn't introduce a new kind of object.  I'm not
convinced that the term "escape procedure" is as broken as you think it
is, or that it necessarily has such strong connotations.  But I'm not
partial to the term.)