Programming Language for Old Timers


by David A. Moon
February 2006 .. September 2008

Comments and criticisms to dave underscore moon atsign alum dot mit dot edu.


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Dynamic Binding

Dynamic binding of variables is a very useful feature, but it is not included in the PLOT language. However, it can easily be implemented as a user-defined library, based on macros, cleanups, and a mechanism for thread-local storage.

---TBD dynamic binding is so useful that maybe I should build it into the language after all?

Here is an example implementation. Define dynamically bindable variables using defdynamic. Use dynamic-bind to create a new dynamic binding of such a variable. These bindings are scoped according to dynamic control state and are per-thread. Accessing a dynamically bindable variable is slower than accessing an ordinary variable. This assumes the existence of a class thread-local-storage whose value slot has a distinct value in each thread. Most operating systems provide a feature like that.

  def *no-local-value* = list(1)                ; a unique object

  defmacro defdynamic ?:typed-variable := ?init =>
    def var        = typed-variable.name
    def local-var  = name(spelling(var) + "-local", var)
    def global-var = name(spelling(var) + "-global", var)
    def type-spec  = typed-variable.type
    `do
       def ?global-var is ?type-spec := ?init
       def ?local-var = thread-local-storage(*no-local-value*)
       defmacro ?var => \`dynamic-binding(?local-var, ?global-var)\` `

  defmacro dynamic-bind ?var is name := ?new-value ?:body =>
    def local-var = name(spelling(var) + "-local", var)
    `block
       def old-value = ?local-var.value
       do ?local-var.value := ?new-value
          ?body
         cleanup: ?local-var.value := old-value`

  ;; Read a dynamically bound variable
  def dynamic-binding(local-var is thread-local-storage, global-var)
    def local-value = local-var.value
    if local-value eq *no-local-value*
      global-var
    else
      local-value

  ;; Write a dynamically bound variable
  defmacro dynamic-binding:= (?local-var is name, ?global-var is name, ?new-value) =>
    `if ?local-var.value eq *no-local-value*
       ?global-var := ?new-value
     else
       ?local-var.value := ?new-value`

A minor problem with this implementation is that reading the dynamically bound variable does not have the specific declared compile-time type. The result type of the runtime function dynamic-binding is anything. This could be fixed by adding a run-time type check after calling dynamic-binding, or if the PLOT type system becomes enhanced to support parameterized types and thread-local-storage and dynamic-binding are parameterized.


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