Loop

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Revision as of 03:23, 1 February 2007 by Nad (talk | contribs) ("loop" and "thread" will change to just "List")
"Loop" and "Thread" should just be "List"

First loops were considered more fundamental to the nodal model being brought about by nodal reduction's necessity for a loop construct. But many these sequences do not necessarily keep cycling and so are not any more fundamental than a thread - they're both just linked lists formed by next/prev associations regardless of their closure. So the new term will just be List.

In the nodal model, a loop is a circularly linked list formed from nodal associations. Since none of the nodes in a loop is a starting or finishing point, a loop can be referenced by any of its node-items. This means that a reference to a loop can also encapsulate the concept of an item of current focus, a concept used heavily by nodal reduction.

If a loop is not circularly-linked, then the last item must link to root and it is called a thread instead. Threads only rotate once and are then automatically unhooked because every quanta sent to root is a new quanta.

In nodal reduction, a node's value (obtained by calling nodeGet/SetValue with the key parameter set to zero) is called the current focus and it is a node in the loop. This node of current-focus is the one which will receive the next quantum of execution from its parent node, and is part of a loop of nodes which all reveive quanta as the loop is rotated by the nodal reduction process.

If a loop has static structure, then it can appear in many contexts simaltaneously, it's parent association will be dynamically maintained by the nodal reduction algorithm.