Harvard vs. vonNeuman

[Paul Koning]

>>>>> "Dwight" == Dwight K Elvey <dwight.elvey at amd.com> writes:

 >> From: "David V. Corbin" <dvcorbin at optonline.net>
 >>>>> >>> Can you create self modifying code in any high level
 >>>>> language, the kind of code where the application program
 >>>>> actually changes it's own instructions?
 >>>>> 
 >>>>> I know in C it is possible to pass an address of a function to
 >>>>> a function, that's not really what I mean.
 >>>>> 
 >> Actually this is (sort of) becoming more common. One exciting
 >> feature of a new platform by the software vendor who shall not be
 >> named, is that the compiler is actually part of the runtime. This
 >> means that any program can write source code to a string (or other
 >> structure) and compile and execute it!!!!!!
 >> 

 Dwight> Hi It was possible to do in early BASIC's that allowed a
 Dwight> machine code subroutine calls. One input the code as data and
 Dwight> then called it. Both LISP and Forth have the ability to, by
 Dwight> program, compile code and then execute it. It is done more
 Dwight> often in LISP. 

Good point about Forth.

I wouldn't say LISP does it more -- whenever you feed code to a Forth
system, it's doing this, so it does it all the time every time...

      paul