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Found at: gopher.quux.org:70/Archives/usenet-a-news/FA.works/81.07.06_ucbvax.2132_fa.works.txt

Aucbvax.2132
fa.works
utzoo!duke!decvax!ucbvax!RYLAND@SRI-KL
Mon Jul  6 04:19:44 1981
Re:  capability machines
From: Chris Ryland <RYLAND SRI-KL AT>
Sorry, Henry, but a capability is NOT just a fancy name for a
pointer in a machine that doesn't have enough address space
to begin with.  I was referring to capabilities in their full
encapsulation sense, such that you can only manipulate an object
if you have the rights to do so (encoded in the capability)
and you can only do it by invoking an appropriate entry in the
capability's type module.  (This is only suggestive; particular
implementations differ, of course.)
No, some capability machines do garbage collection.  Hydra did.
Lisp is not a capability machine.  Lisp is just a low-level
language for a symbolic-object machine, and thus is attractive
to hackers, because they can grovel with arbitrary "addresses"
when they please (CADDADR, for example.)  Of course, no one in
their right mind would use Lisp that way today.
/Chris
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 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.


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