[Pan-users] Re: Re: Re: Problem with filtering

[Duncan]

Calin A. Culianu posted
<address@hidden>,
excerpted below,  on Mon, 06 Oct 2003 14:04:03 -0400:

> Can you point me to any literature or references?  I would be very curious
> to see the term reentrancy used in such an incorrect manner.

I doubt it..  I was serious when I switched to Linux, and have long since
thrown out or sold most of my programming literature and resources
related to MSWormOS.  I don't intend to ever need them again! (Besides, if
I ever did, the old ones would be so outdated as to be worth about what
MSDOS or Windows 3.1 programing documentation is now, to most folks.  Of
course, I do recognize that DOS in particular is still used in some
situations, and the 16 bit techniques used in Windows 3.1 might come in
handy for the limited memory and processing power applications of palmtops.)

One particular guess, however, would be the Visual Basic
(3/4/5/6) Programmer's Guide to the Win32 API (or a similar title, that's
from memory), by Daniel Appleman.  I learned a lot from the 4.0 version,
and bought was it version 5 or 6, later.  It might also have been in the
MSDN kit included with the later VB Pro, or one of the Visual Basic
Programmer's Journals that I used to read regularly.  I'd guess the first
book, however, in the 5/6 version.  Assuming that's the source, if that's
a wrong usage, there's an awful lot of professional VB programmers that'd
swear by it!

> But it appears to me that there is some confusion here in this
> discussion -- I detected an implication that there are some inherent
> issues with sharing read-only code pages among multiple programs or
> threads.  It must be made clear that there inherently are no issues with
> sharing read-only memory pages, whether they be code (text/executable),
> or read-only data.

There was that implication, yes, but it's not direct.  You are correct in
that there's nothing wrong with the theory.  However, in W9x, there was
enough wrong with the implementation that it seriously affected stability.
Part of that, as I understand it, wasn't so much the copy on write, but
the fact that there WAS only one copy, and despite the "protected memory"
at the application level, the system and shared memory wasn't so protected
in W9x, and if that single copy was ever written to by an erroneous
program pointer.. it could and often did have disastrous consequences for
system stability.

Of course, again, I could "understand it" wrong.  If so, it's not really
worth worrying about for me as far as MSWormOS goes, as AFAIAC, MSWormOS
is part of my long left behind "indiscretions of youth", that I don't
intend to ever work on or develop for, again.

However..  Objectionable use of the term noted, and I will attempt to use
other terms next time it comes up..

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin