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HELP POPCONSTRUCT                       Updated Aaron Sloman, Jan 1991

This mechanism is strictly obsolete and replaced by the more general
and powerful facilities described in

        REF *POPCOMPILE/pop_pop11_flags
        SHOWLIB *COMPILE_MODE.

However, for the sake of backward compatibility an autolodable version
of -popconstruct- is still provided in the library. (It actually loads
LIB * POPDEFINEPROCEDURE, which is also obsolete but provided for
backward compatibility.)

popconstruct -> BOOL
BOOL -> popconstruct

If POPCONSTRUCT is set to TRUE then list or vector expressions (not
containing '%' or '^' or '^^') are compiled as constants (CONstant
STRUCTures). This produces more compact procedures, and also prevents
frequent re-construction of lists, e.g. for patterns used with the
matcher. (See HELP *MATCHES)

However, the danger in using POPCONSTRUCT is that the program code is
made ambiguous: the same procedure definition can produce two very
different kinds of behaviour, depending on whether POPCONSTRUCT is true
or false at the time of compilation. It is therefore better to use the
more recently introduced syntactic form

    #_< .................. >_#

in cases where structures are to be created at compile time, and leave
POPCONSTRUCT set to FALSE, its default value. (See HELP * HASH_)

However, these brackets are used, it is important to ensure that the
list does not include uses of "^", "^^", or "%" that were intended
to indicate run time construction of part of the list or vector.


-- Example of the effect of making POPCONSTRUCT TRUE ------------------

After setting it to TRUE, if you update an element of a list created in
a procedure, then that can alter future runs of the procedure, e.g. when
the following procedure is run for the second time, it apparently
ignores the instruction to reset the value of LIST to [0]:

    true -> popconstruct;
    define counter() -> result;
        vars list;
        [0] -> list;               ;;; List built at compile time
        list(1) -> result;
        result + 1 -> list(1);     ;;; alters the list in the procedure
    enddefine;

    counter() =>
    ** 0

    counter()=>
    ** 1

Compare the following

    false -> popconstruct;

    define counter() -> result;
        vars list;
        [0] -> list;               ;;; now rebuilt on each run
        list(1) -> result;
        result + 1 -> list(1);
    enddefine;

    counter() =>
    ** 0

    counter()=>
    ** 0

Now compare the use of #_<...>_#

    false -> popconstruct;

    define counter() -> result;
        vars list;
        #_< [0] >_# -> list;        ;;; List built at compile time
        list(1) -> result;
        result + 1 -> list(1);
    enddefine;

    counter() =>
    ** 0

    counter()=>
    ** 1

See also
REF * POPCOMPILE/pop11_comp_constructor
REF * OBSOLETE  - lists other related obsolete facilities
REF * LISTS     - for more information on lists
HELP * VECTORS  - for more information on vectors
HELP * CONSTANT - information on constant identifiers
TEACH * ARROW   - on the use of "^" and "^^" in lists
REF * SYNTAX
HELP * MATCHES

--- C.all/help/popconstruct
--- Copyright University of Sussex 1991. All rights reserved. ----------