ArrayArrays

[Edward Kmett]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 1:24 PM, Edward Z. Yang <ezyang at mit.edu> wrote:

> It seems to me that we should take a page from OCaml's playbook
> and add support for native mutable fields in objects, because
> this is essentially what a mix of words and pointers is.
>

That actually doesn't work as well as one might hope.

We currently treat data constructor closures as so much tissue paper around
a present. We tear them open, rip out all their contents, scatter them
throughout our code and then we build a whole new data constructor closure
when we're done, or we just leave them suspended in closures awaiting
someone to demand we finally make a new data constructor.

Half the time we don't even give back the data constructor closure and push
it into update g frames and we just give back the items on the stack.

With the machinery I mentioned above I get a world where every time I
access an object I can know it is evaluated for real, so this means I'm not
stuck 'entering an unknown closure', and getting it to give me back a slab
of memory that we know is a real data constructor that i can bang away on
mutable entries in.

In a world where things in * could hold mutable pointers we have to care a
lot more about object identity in deeply uncomfortable ways.

With what I've implemented I only care about object identity between things
in # that are gcptrs. The garbage collector may move them around, but it
doesn't put in thunks anywhere.

-Edward
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