In article <a05111b10b95f7847af7a@[63.120.19.221]>,
Dan Sugalski  <dan / sidhe.org> wrote:
>At 5:22 AM +0900 7/21/02, Phil Tomson wrote:
>>In article <a05111b05b95de4b58e30@[63.120.19.221]>,
>>Dan Sugalski  <dan / sidhe.org> wrote:
>>>At 10:35 PM +0900 7/19/02, James F.Hranicky wrote:
>>>>While people are kicking around ideas for new backends for Ruby,
>>>>does anyone think that a backend could be written for Ruby that
>>>>uses the Objective C (GnuStep, Cocoa) runtime libraries? Or even
>>>>just a translator from Ruby to ObjC ?
>>>>
>>>>Seems that the languages are simliar in many respects, and it seems
>>>>like ObjC, being a superset of C, would make a good backend if it's
>>>>possible (threads, performance, etc).
>>>
>>>You'd have a heck of a time with continuations, unfortunately.
>>  >Otherwise it should  be reasonably doable.
>>
>>Well, in the current Ruby implementation continuations are implemented
>>with C code, why couldn't they be implemented in ObjectiveC?
>
>I was looking at the translator aspect, translating Ruby to 
>Objective-C. That was the part that was the real non-starter, 
>courtesy of continuations. (I've got a paper or two kicking around 
>about some of the interesting things that the Scheme folks had to do 
>to get continuations going with what's essentially a C environment. 
>It's... interesting)
>
>Certainly the interpreter could be done in Objective C. That part's 
>no big deal since objective C's pretty much a superset of C so ruby 
>right now is more or less an Objective C app.


I'm thinking of the translator aspect as well (Ruby => Objective C).  But 
I suppose we'd have to muck around with the Objective C runtime to get 
continuations to work... I dunno how hard that would be, but it seems like 
it might be doable....

Phil