Slobodan Blazeski  <slobodan.blazeski@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock) wrote:
| > ... such as the "linear Lisp" Henry Baker has written about at
| > great length, see: ...[examples]...
| > and several others. See his archive page:
| >   http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/
| 
| Could linear lisp support continuations?
+---------------

I'm not an expert in either linear logic or linear Lisp, but
from a brief look at Baker's papers, I'd have to say probably
"yes, sort of", but not usefully in the ways Scheme programmers
would normally expect. Consider this excerpt [with apologies if
I've in any way distorted the meaning by eliding]:

    http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/Use1Var.html
    'Use-Once' Variables and Linear Objects -- Storage Management,
    Reflection and Multi-Threading
    Henry G. Baker (1994)
    ...
    A 'use-once' variable must be dynamically referenced exactly
    once within its scope. Unreferenced use-once variables must be
    explicitly killed, and multiply-referenced use-once variables
    must be explicitly copied; this duplication and deletion is
    subject to the constraint that some linear datatypes do not
    support duplication and deletion methods.
    ...
    For example, use-once variables allow for the safe/controlled
    use of reified language implementation objects like single-use
    continuations.
    ...
    Continuations can be linear (enabling an efficient implementation,
    unlike [Lincoln92]), since they normally return only once ("one-shot"
    [Haynes87]), even when doing co-routining and time-sharing [Wand80].
    (Prolog-like backtracking [Haynes87] requires expensive copying--if
    allowed--or (non-linear) sharing of continuations.) Of course, a
    linear call/cc can have no implicit continuation--the only way to
    return from a linear call/cc is to invoke the passed continuation,
    so a function which does not escape via a passed continuation must
    return it for its caller's use. Escaping via a continuation kills
    an implicit continuation thereby causing intermediate linear variables
    to be finalized a la Common Lisp unwind-protect.
    ...

So, yes, you can have linear continuations, but they won't behave
like default (non-linear) Scheme multi-use continuations.


-Rob

p.s. In the presence of linear variables, non-linear (Scheme-style)
continuations also violate the "one-use" guarantee of linear variables,
since invoking a continuation captured between the definition of a
linear variable and its single use (single reference) would cause
the variable to be referenced again. Oops.

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
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