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From: davis@ilog.fr (Harley Davis)
Subject: Re: Multithreading
In-Reply-To: kem@prl.ufl.edu's message of 15 Nov 1994 19:00:45 GMT
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Date: 16 Nov 1994 10:14:15 GMT
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In article <3ab0gt$ibl@sand.cis.ufl.edu> kem@prl.ufl.edu (Kelly Murray) writes:

   Stack management makes life hard -- you must allow stacks to grow !
   You can't just punt like C-threads and only allow fixed-sized
   stacks.  This essentially requires that you can relocate stacks
   into different addresses.

Why is this more important in Lisp than in C?  Is it a question of
doing the right thing or is there a deeper motivation?

   Locks and Synchronization.  What happens when two processes
   change/add/remove a symbol's property at the same time?  Let the
   property list just get munged?  Maybe the C people would say OK,
   but not in Lisp.  I added a "synced" symbol properties (not Common
   Lisp).  Also hash-tables must be synched, and packages for
   interning symbols, and probably other stuff I can't remember.

Why are these items handled differently than other shared resources,
where I suppose you would use a locking or semaphore mechanism?

Curiously,

-- Harley Davis 

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