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Re: Arg evaluation order



This is a response to a rather old message -- but then again, a file
system lossage recently reset my state to July 17, causing me to take
a fresh look at some then-pending mail messages (and then the first
time I tried to send this message it bounced):

> Jinx writes:

> 	The problem is that there are perfectly portable sequential programs
> 	which work when ANY sequential order is used, but not when
> 	interleaved.  Consider, for example, ...

> Now, a compiler should be able trivially to determine that node-mark!
> is a (potential) mutator, and hence that count-nodes! is a mutator; 
> thus determining that there is a race condition just in case
> 	(eq? (node-left graph-node) (node-right graph-node))
> is straightforward, ....

Your argument here seems to be devoted to whether a compiler can tell
that, in this case, a parallel execution could yield a result different
from that of any legal sequential execution.
I don't think anybody is trying to *prevent* a Scheme implementation
from working in parallel, if it can prove that the result of such
operation will be equivalent to that of a legal sequential execution.
The issue here is whether the Scheme specification should be weakened
so as to include as a legal execution order the kind of interleaving
that Jinx's example highlights.  I agree completely with Jinx that this
would be a radical change and would cause great difficulty in writing
portable programs.  You can invent a language that is like Scheme in
every respect except that it relaxes this restriction (I have, in fact),
but that's different enough that you shouldn't call it Scheme.
						-Bert Halstead