Control delimiters and their hierarchies

D Sitaram, M Felleisen - Lisp and Symbolic Computation, 1990 - Springer
D Sitaram, M Felleisen
Lisp and Symbolic Computation, 1990Springer
Since control operators for the unrestricted transfer of control are too powerful in many
situations, we propose the control delimiter as a means for restricting control manipulations
and study its use in Lisp-and Scheme-like languages. In a Common Lisp-like setting, the
concept of delimiting control provides a well-suited terminology for explaining different
control constructs. For higher-order languages like Scheme, the control delimiter is the
means for embedding Lisp control constructs faithfully and for realizing high-level control …
Abstract
Since control operators for theunrestricted transfer of control are too powerful in many situations, we propose thecontrol delimiter as a means for restricting control manipulations and study its use in Lisp- and Scheme-like languages. In a Common Lisp-like setting, the concept of delimiting control provides a well-suited terminology for explaining different control constructs. For higher-order languages like Scheme, the control delimiter is the means for embedding Lisp control constructs faithfully and for realizing high-level control abstractions elegantly. A deeper analysis of the examples suggests a need for an entirecontrol hierarchy of such delimiters. We show how to implement such a hierarchy on top of the simple version of a control delimiter.
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