Higher-Order and Symbolic Computation, 12(1)7-45
Implementation Strategies for First-Class ContinuationsWilliam D. Clinger, College of Computer Science, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
Anne H. Hartheimer
Eric M. Ost
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Abstract: Scheme and Smalltalk continuations may have unlimited
extent. This means that a purely stack-based implementation of
continuations, as suffices for most languages, is inadequate. We
review several implementation strategies for continuations and compare
their performance using instruction counts for the normal case and
continuation-intensive synthetic benchmarks for other scenarios,
including coroutines and multitasking. All of the strategies constrain
a compiler in some way, resulting in indirect costs that are hard to
measure directly. We use related measurements on a set of benchmarks
to calculate upper bounds for these indirect costs.
Keywords: continuations, stacks, heap allocation, coroutines, multitasking, Scheme, Smalltalk |
This article can be downloaded [here].
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