World: r4wp

Pipes usually refer to network connections. The encryption that is 
usually employed there (SSL) is missing from many REBOL versions

Pipes can also refer to local connections between processes, but 
that's originally a Unix technology

AltME is secure for partly different reasons. We are told it employs 
encryption over the network, but we can't check that, because it's 
closed source

When AltME was introduces a decade ago, many communication systems 
were unencrypted, so it was good then. Like Lotus Notes at the time

It's also more secure because you run your own server, instead of 
handing your data to a provider. That's fundamental, as long as you 
keep the data safe on all AltME clients. Which is hard, because it's 
not encrypted on disk

Ah. Ok. Thanks so much

does anyone have time to sanity check / comment on the style of the 
following script: http://0branch.com/highlight/snippets/rfunc.r?

(i left in a couple of examples to demonstrate usage)

it's certainly quite clean looking. did not analyse the code yet.

as the title suggests, it's a fudge

One immediate note:


the RFUNC function as it is written actually modifies its SPEC and 
CODE arguments (that may be OK, but should be mentioned)

spec isn't modified

re: body, is "Function body to be augmented w/ recursion context" 
not clear? [if not, will add clarification]

Actually, the SPEC block *is* modified, but in a way that may not 
matter often

It might be better, though, to not modify it at all.

what are you referring to?

the USE function modifies its argument.

are you referring to shadowed bindings?

like, rfunc [ _recur_ ] [ _recur_ ] won't do what i expect?

it would do what you expect, but:

spec: [...]
body: [....]
rfunc [spec] [body]

would cause some modifications that may be unwanted.

sorry, I meant

rfunc spec body

hmm, i haven't considered that case

However, the USE function still (in R2) does not contain any warning 
it is modifying its BODY argument...

i just thought i was setting up a new lexical scope

You are OK, most probably, but not due to the fact that USE is not 
modifying, rather due to the fact that it most frequently does not 
matter.

i'm afraid i'm not clear on what's being mutated

THat is a complicated issue, but the principle is easy. USE modifies 
it BODY and should be treated as modifying. However, you can easily 
define a non-modifying version:

    USE words copy/deep body

...and, in most cases the difference does not matter (but still, 
I prefer to be warned)

aha, thanks

i just looked at the r2 and r3 docs, i see the issue now

so: conceptually, it shouldn't matter as you're supposed to be recursing 
rfuncs with 'recur'

but semantically it would be better to address this

updated: http://0branch.com/highlight/snippets/rfunc2.r

so, if i haven't overlooked anything else: think anyone would find 
this useful?

one more style-related:

I do not know why you used the

    do [func spec wrapped]

I guess that

    func spec wrapped

should suffice.

Marcs, It only works if the word 'recur appears at the end of your 
function (like in safe).
The code flow is never interrupted anywhere else.

You should have used the throw/catch technique instead of simply 
setting a state (true/false) to control the iterations.

Besides that, I think your code is a little convoluted (basically, 
you're just inserting the body of a function in a while loop.

ladislav: oh, d'oh -- thanks

steeve: right, the call has to be in tail position; thought i'd mentioned 
that in the docs but evidently not

[a] why would thow/catch be better here?

[b] why is it convoluted to convert to a loop?

because you could use recurse from anywhere in the function not only 
at the tail

[B] it's not by definition, it's just the way you do it ;-)

hmm, okay

i don't follow your point re: recursing from anywhere (i.e., from 
non-tail position)

via the use of throw/catch

if you're not in tail position you'd still have to push stack frames

Marc's code is an implementation of tail-recursive function. Such 
implementations have been posted by some people in the past, but 
there are some minor differences between them. For example, the way 
how the arguments were passed differed from Marc's idea.

I thought you wanted to simulate tail/recursion only (it's what youre 
current code do anyway)
in that case you don't need to store the stack frame

To answer to the question: why tail recursion from anywhere ?
What if you want conditionned recursion ? 
Recurse could appear inside a IF block not at at the tail.

aha, misunderstood your point