From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,fcc2d88d867060e8 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2003-12-22 14:58:17 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news2.google.com!fu-berlin.de!newsfeed.mathworks.com!wn14feed!worldnet.att.net!4.24.21.153!chcgil2-snh1.gtei.net!news.bbnplanet.com!crtntx1-snh1.gtei.net!cambridge1-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!bos-service1.ext.raytheon.com!dfw-service2.ext.raytheon.com.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Mark H Johnson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: load and use a ".o" file? References: <132Fb.3462$I02.2996@newssvr23.news.prodigy.com> <6pEFb.418$b77.552@dfw-service2.ext.raytheon.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 16:58:00 -0600 NNTP-Posting-Host: 192.27.48.39 X-Complaints-To: news@ext.ray.com X-Trace: dfw-service2.ext.raytheon.com 1072133896 192.27.48.39 (Mon, 22 Dec 2003 16:58:16 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 16:58:16 CST Organization: Raytheon Company Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:3719 Date: 2003-12-22T16:58:00-06:00 List-Id: lifetime n00b wrote: > Mark H Johnson wrote: > >> - call xyz (dispatched to an activation function) >> - the activation function checks first the active segments for a >> symbol within them called xyz. If found, it fixes up the dispatch to >> go directly to that xyz and resumes execution. >> - if not in an active segment, it uses the search path (similar to >> PATH on Unix) to find a file named xyz. If found, it loads that file >> into a segment, makes it active, and does the work of the second step. >> - if no such file is found, it calls the command line interpreter >> with an error status. > > > This actually sounds a lot like using a distributed system (Annex E) > with both active and passive partitions on the same local machine, > though probably more efficient. > No, they were actually subroutine calls. The compiler generated slightly different code for an "in segment" call and a "cross segment" call due to the indirection. The glue code (to do the lookup) was basically a system service done by the OS to facilitate activation of new segments. By the way, when I say segment - I mean a segment of the same address space, not a partition. Think to the 386 processor where you have 32 k segments in certain processing modes. On Multics, the segments were 256 Kwords (1 Mbyte) in size which worked quite well in practice. --Mark