Re: [RFA] convert blocks to dictionaries, phase 1, main part

[Andrew Cagney <ac131313@ges.redhat.com>]

> On Mon, Sep 16, 2002 at 03:25:53PM -0700, David Carlton wrote:
> 
>> This is the first of three patches that will begin the process of
>> converting blocks to do variable lookup via dictionaries.  (Which are
>> what I'd been calling environments until Andrew noted that that
>> clashed with the existing 'struct environ'.)
>> 
>> The goal of these three patches it to make sure that all blocks that
>> are created have a 'dict' member.  Once these patches are applied, it
>> will be possible to lookup variables either using the old methods
>> (BLOCK_SYM, etc.) or using the new dictionary methods.  Phase 2 will
>> then convert all accessors over to using th new dictionary methods;
>> phase 3 will get rid of the old methods so that the new dictionary
>> methods get used exclusively.
> 
> 
> David,
> 
> I've only skimmed this, but it looks nice.  I think that you should
> take Andrew's suggestion, though - create a branch to finish this work
> on.  It's a bit of a hassle, since you'll need to do periodic merges to
> the branch, but I don't feel right adding something with this many
> temporary interfaces and FIXMEs to the trunk.  Then you can commit
> patches on the branch without approval, and get it into a stabler
> state.

It will still need a general thumbs up, but at least the maintainer will 
have the confidence of knowing that it really does work.

cf the recent problem with ranges.

Andrew