Implementation of transfers out of closures

[Neal Gafter]

On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 11:53 AM, John Rose <John.Rose at sun.com> wrote:
> In the example code, the dead field is superfluous.  The code should just
> set frame$.thread to null.  One variable is always better than two, as far
> as the JIT is concerned.

Is that thread-safe?  From the same thread, we see the correct value,
and from another thread we see either null or the original thread's
reference; either way we get the right behavior.  Yes, good idea.

> It is often better to put the throw early in the code, as soon as you know
> there is going to be a throw, rather than make a method call which never
> returns and throw from inside.  Less for the compiler and runtime to unwrap.
>  Therefore, you might want to consider making the throwiness of
> Jump.transfer public:  Have transfer return a RuntimeEx which the caller
> must then throw.  It's no loss of generality:  The transfer method does not
> actually need to return on all implementations.

Sounds good.  Thanks for the other references, too!

-Neal