3 ms·

Unless I’m missing something devious hidden in the dense terseness, it seems every single execution of the REPL leaks memory (that call to `wd` in the print/exe

Unless I’m missing something devious hidden in the dense terseness, it seems every single execution of the REPL leaks memory (that call to `wd` in the print/execute loop mallocs memory but never frees it). I guess this was so much a proof-of-concept that Arthur Whitney thought even rudimentary memory management was unimportant. It’s also amusing that he chooses to spell out “noun” and “verb” but nothing else. Maybe his brain got tired by that point and could no longer remember the meaning of so many single-letter variables and functions.

rpz 4y ago
hoosieree 4y ago
> I guess this was so much a proof-of-concept that Arthur Whitney thought even rudimentary memory management was unimportant. That seems reasonable to me. The way I understand the story, Whitney wrote this as a "sketch". Its purpose was not to be an industrial strength interpreter, but to communicate a few key concepts so another skilled programmer (Roger Hui) could pick it up and run with it.