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Remark

This is another proofreading time remark. The new version of the EA interpreter permits the use of two additional rule constructors. One is the case constructor, like that in Pascal, which may make the execution substantially more efficient. Of course, the same set of updates is generated by a case command and its case-free equivalent; the difference is in how fast this set is generated. For example, consider a sequence of rules of the form ``if t=i then Ri endif'' where i ranges from 1 to a relatively large n. This example is extreme, because the set {1,...,n} of alternatives is so easy to deal with; but it is not unusual to have similar long sequences of rules. In addition, the case construct makes it easier to program a sequential execution of a sequence of rules, which is sometimes desirable. The other rule constructor is ``let x=t in R'', which prevents re-evaluations of term in R and which has been used informally. The let constructor was advocated by Raghu Mani who is working on the new EA interpreter.


huggins@acm.org
Thu Mar 23 17:30:35 EST 1995