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<title>avram - a virtual machine code interpreter: 2.7.10 Assignment</title>

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<a name="Assignment"></a>
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<hr size="1">
<a name="Assignment-1"></a>
<h3 class="subsection">2.7.10 Assignment</h3>

<a name="index-assignment"></a>
<a name="index-imperative-programming"></a>
<p>In an imperative programming paradigm, a machine consists partly of an
ensemble of addressable storage locations, whose contents are changed
over time by assignment statements. An assignment statement includes
some computable function of the global machine state, and the address of
the location whose contents will be overwritten with the value computed
from the function when it is evaluated.
</p>
<p>Compiling a language containing assignment statements into virtual
machine code suitable for <code>avram</code> might be facilitated by
exploiting the following property.
</p>
<dl compact="compact">
<dt> <em>P16</em></dt>
<dd><p>([[<code>assign</code>]] <code>(<var>p</var>,<var>f</var>)</code>) <code><var>x</var></code> = [[<code>replace</code>]] <code>((<var>p</var>,<var>f</var> <var>x</var>),<var>x</var>)</code>
</p></dd>
</dl>

<p>The identifier <code>assign</code> is used in <code>silly</code> to express a
virtual code fragment having the form shown below, and <code>replace</code>
corresponds to a further operation to be explained presently.
<a name="index-assign"></a>
</p>
<dl compact="compact">
<dt> <em>T18</em></dt>
<dd><p>[[<code>assign</code>]] <code>(<var>p</var>,<var>f</var>)</code> = <code>(((<var>p</var>,<var>f</var>),nil),nil)</code>
</p></dd>
</dl>

<p>This feature simulates assignment statements in the following way.  The
variable <code><var>x</var></code> in <em>P16</em> corresponds intuitively to the set
of addressable locations in the machine. The variable <code><var>f</var></code>
corresponds to the function whose value will be stored in the location
addressed by <code><var>p</var></code>. The result of a function expressed using
<code>assign</code> is a new store similar to the argument <code><var>x</var></code>, but
with the part of it in location <code><var>p</var></code> replaced by <code><var>f</var>
<var>x</var></code>. A source text with a sequence of assignment statements could
therefore be translated directly into a functional composition of trees
in this form.
</p>
<a name="index-storage-locations"></a>
<p>The way storage locations are modeled in virtual code using this feature
would be as nested pairs, and the address <code><var>p</var></code> of a location
is a tree interpreted similarly to the trees used as operands to the
<code>field</code> operator described in <a href="Field.html#Field">Field</a>, to specify
deconstructions. In fact, <code>replace</code> can be defined as a minimal
solution to the following equation.
<a name="index-replace"></a>
</p>
<dl compact="compact">
<dt> <em>E0</em></dt>
<dd><p>([[<code>field</code>]] <code><var>p</var></code>) [[<code>replace</code>]] <code>((<var>p</var>,<var>y</var>),<var>x</var>)</code> = <code><var>y</var></code>
</p></dd>
</dl>

<p>This equation regrettably does
not lend itself to inferring the <code>silly</code> source for <code>replace</code>
<a name="index-isolate-1"></a>
using the <code>isolate</code> algorithm in <a href="Variable-Freedom.html#Variable-Freedom">Variable Freedom</a>, so an explicit
construction is given in <a href="Replace.html#Replace">Replace</a>. This construction need not concern a
reader who considers the equation a sufficiently precise specification
in itself.
</p>
<p>In view of the way addresses for deconstruction are represented as
trees, it would be entirely correct to infer from this equation that a
tuple of values computed together can be assigned to a tuple of
locations. The locations don&rsquo;t even have to be &ldquo;contiguous&rdquo;, but could
be anywhere in the tree representing the store, and the function is
computed from the contents of all of them prior to the update. Hence,
this simulation of assignment fails to capture the full inconvenience of
imperative programming except in the special case of a single value
assigned to a single location, but fortunately this case is the only one
most languages allow.
</p>
<p>There is another benefit to this feature besides running languages with
assignment statements in them, which is the support of abstract or
opaque data structures. A function that takes an abstract data structure
as an argument and returns something of the same type can be coded in a
way that is independent of the fields it doesn&rsquo;t use. For example, a
data structure with three fields having the field identifiers
<code>foo</code>, <code>bar</code>, and <code>baz</code> in some source language might be
represented as a tuple <code>((<var>foo contents</var>,<var>bar
contents</var>),<var>baz contents</var>)</code> on the virtual code level. Compile time
constants like <code>bar = ((nil,(nil,nil)),nil)</code> could be defined in an
effort to hide the details of the representation, so that the virtual
code <code>field bar</code> is used instead of <code>compose(right,left)</code>.
Using field identifiers appropriately, a function that transforms such a
structure by operating on the <code>bar</code> field could have the virtual
<a name="index-field-1"></a>
code <code>couple(couple(field foo,compose(f,field bar)),field
baz)</code>. However, this code does not avoid depending on the representation
of the data structure, because it relies on the assumption of the <code>foo</code>
field being on the left of the left, and the <code>baz</code> field being on
the right. On the other hand, the code <code>assign(bar,compose(f,field
bar))</code> does the same job without depending on anything but the position
of the <code>bar</code> field. Furthermore, if this position were to change
relative to the others, the code maintenance would be limited to a
recompilation.
</p>
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