Re: Question on mutability of argument lists

[Marco Maggi]

Niels Möller wrote:
> When specifying  the use of rest  arguments for procedures
> (r7rs,  sec 4.1.4),  it  seems to  imply  that the  passed
> argument list is mutable?

Yes, because it states "the  sequence of actual arguments is
converted  into a  newly  allocated list,  and  the list  is
stored in  a fresh  location" and "The  value stored  in the
binding of the last variable will be a newly allocated list"
(PDF  version,   page  13,  right  column,   description  of
formals); it  is new at  every function  call, so we  can do
everything with it.

> This  is  convenient  in  some ways,  e.g.,  I  think  the
> following  definition  of  the list  procedure  should  be
> correct

>   (define (list . args) args)

Yes.  Vicare defines it as:

   (define list (lambda x x))

> However,  for  a  natural implementation  which  evaluates
> arguments and conses the results  up to a list, this seems
> to require an  extra copy of the argument  list, after all
> values are evaluated  and before the list is  bound to the
> rest parameter.

Yes,  but it  depends  on  what is  "natural"  for you.   In
Vicare, when  calling a  Scheme function, all  the arguments
are pushed on the Scheme stack segment (similar to calling a
C  function) and  then the  function is  called; the  callee
takes  the leftover  arguments and  puts them  into a  newly
allocated  list.    In  this  implementation  there   is  no
duplication of  list's spine (with heap  memory allocation),
just use of stack slots.

> To see why, assume that evaluation of one of the arguments
> captures its continuation and returns several times.  this
> isn't  the first  argument  evaluated,  without the  extra
> copying, one gets several calls  to the procedure with the
> rest argument sharing structure, and if the shared part is
> mutated, things go bad.

Yes it would go that way.   But the standard mandates that a
new list must be built at every call and stored into a fresh
location at every call; no shared structure is allowed.

HTH
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