self's id

8.11: adda/oop/self's id:
7.28: intro:
. the expression tree being sent to number's type mgt
contains ptrs to the symbol table nodes;
and, those nodes include type tags .
. the symbol table is constant,
being part of the function's template;
the code points to symbol table nodes,
and then those nodes point to the stack,
or have immediate data if constant .
8.11:
. how does an object know its own id?
an expression tree sent to a type mgt
has a context (process, act'rec)
that tells it who the caller is,
and all the obj references in the expr'tree
are relative to that context .
. messaging an obj means calling its type mgt,
and then that type mgt is calling the methods
which then have access to the current context
as a global just like in assembly language
where programs have access to a current
stack pointer and program counter .

infratypes of surtypes, phyla of taxa

8.13: adda/oop/rethinking terminology:
. I have terminology for biop (binary operations) oop
arranged as supertypes existing as
one of fixed number of subtypes;
eg, Number is a supertype because it manages the
binary interactions between the following types
which are therefore called subtypes of number:
integer, real, decimal, rational, irrational, complex .
. classic oop hasn't played well with biop's:
being objected-oriented has meant that
(obj+x) had to be expressed as (obj.+(x))
and then obj's type, say int, needed to have
(+)-operations for each possible numeric type
(int, real, rational, irrational, complex);
what we needed was multi-dispatching:
where (obj+ x) gets sent to the supertype,
which finds the right subtype to handle it .

. the notion of subtype
can also include range limits .
. there are naturally limits imposed by
the numeric types that machines provide,
such as what can fit in multiple of bytes;
eg, int8, int16, int32, float32 .
. within my theory of oop,
these might be called infratypes,
for reminding of the term infrastructure .
[10.5:
. infratype is a relative term:
regardless of whether it's a cpu type,
or a type you reused from a library,
an infratype of T.type is any type that has been
reused for implementing T .
10.7:
. I'm realizing that infratypes
should be supported by the type.tag
(simply because we should support
space-efficient numerics,
and we do that, then we need to know
which infratype we're using in
(8, 16, 32, extendible);
therefore,
what I've been calling subtypes
(in the biop oop context)
can instead be called ideal infratypes
(in contrast to optimized infratypes);
likewise,
what I've been calling the supertype
can instead be the opposite of infratype:
that seems to be the word: surtype .
-- also some extra checking just now
shows that the idea I'm trying to convey,
is the same as that found in the words:
{surname, surface} -- the outermost part .]

[10.5: 10.7:
. in contrast to the ideal infratypes
that are designed by mathematicians,
the optimized infratypes are chosen by the
intersection of what types the platform provides
and what is of use by the
constrained versions of the ideal infratypes .

. there is a relationship between
subtypes and infratypes:
. within a polymorphic type,
infratypes are the type's possible forms (morphs);
whereas an value whose type is a subtype of T,
can be used anywhere a T-typed obj is permitted;
but the reverse is not true:
if you have a variable obj whose type is a subtype of T,
it cannot be used anywhere a T-typed obj is permitted;
rather the replacing obj must be able to handle
every value and every operation
that could be handled by the obj' it's replacing .

. a surtype has a finite set of ideal infratypes,
ie, types distinguished by having differences in
either the allowed set of operations,
or the data format of the current state .
. within each ideal infratype,
we then have a possibly infinite number of
additional subtypes
according to constraints on
value attributes, eg, on the value's range,
or the scientific format's number of digits,
or on the number of fraction digits .]

safe pointer details consider concurrency

8.4: adda/dstr/safe pointers/
space-efficiently pointing to both static type info and obj:
. we need to point at the symbol table index
not the obj itself, because,
only the symbol table index has the type tag
in the case when the type is static .
. as for space-efficiently doing this
at first I was worried about the
huge length of full paths
(process#, act'rec#, symbol table index);
but, [8.3:
just like urls have versions,
{fullpath(absolute), filename(relative addressing)},
pointers too should be available as
both long and short versions:
the full path is
(process#, act'rec#, symbol table index)
but if you are in the same act'rec,
you'd use a shorter version of the pointer:]

. if you are in the same activation record,
then the pointer is a mere 16bits:
(we assume here that a pointer needs a 3bit type tag,
and that the max# of symbols is 2^13 .

[8.21: 3bits?
. locally we need no tag at all,
because we just assume everthing is local;
otherwise, if it's a general pointer,
it will have the general type.tag arrangement
which usually means a static supertype,
and a dynamic on-board subtype,
which in the case of pointer needs 2 bits
for these 4 cases:
( internet address,
, local to system
, local to process
, local to act'rec ) .]

8.26: processID irrelevant:
. do we need to track the processID?
. any obj' we'd want to point at
is located within some act'rec;
so, isn't the act'recID enough?
8.28: 8.26:
. the act'rec obj' could have a subtype.tag
so that the same act'rec supertype
could represent all sorts of objects
like subprograms, coprograms, type mgt obj's, etc .
10.6:
. the main place to for finding out
how the current act'rec is related to a process
is by asking the task mgt who is
using this act'rec ID as a node index
into a tree of processes and their act'recs .

8.28: processID irrelevant despite pointers:
. when using pointers, the process ID matters;
because, we can give a pointer for assignments?
but that's not the problem of our pointer:
it has only to locate a target,
and it's up to exec to do the right thing .
. any time an assignment takes place
the target must be either a global obj,
(these are essentially act'recs because
they're made thread-safe by msg-taking functions)
or the owner had to have ordered the assignment
(that means either the owner is suspended for a subroutine
or the target is locked for a promised assign by an async).

8.26: processID fundamental?:
. we'd like to keep pointer sizes small,
so if we could know that an act'rec would
stay local to a particular process,
then we could possibly divide the number of act'recs
by the number of processes .
. we could say that each process has its own heap;
and, just as each act'rec has few symbol nodes,
a process has few act'recs,
so this is another form of subheap
the process subheap vs an actrec subheap .
8.28:
. unfortunately, given the use of recursion,
the number of act'recs per process can still be
arbitrarily large, so this would do nothing for
the size of an act'rec ID .
. the situation where process is fundamental
would be in systems with unprotected vars;
because, then process is a unit of thread safety:
anything can access any var within the process,
and then the process has only one thread .
. what we could have instead,
is a system where encapsulation and locks
are the basis of thread-safe computing:
. anything accessing a var must instead
ask that var's type mgt to do the accessing,
and then the type mgt has only one thread .
. a var lock gives sole ownership of a var
to another thread .
. in that sort of system,
a process is nothing more than an act'rec
that is run concurrently vs sequentially .