EZ Processes

Abstract:

EZ is a system that integrates the facilities provided separately by traditional programming languages and operating systems. This integration is accomplished by casting services provided by traditional operating services as EZ language features. EZ is a high-level string processing language with a persistent memory. Traditional file and directory services are provided by EZ's strings and associative tables, and tables are also used for procedure activations. This paper describes processes in EZ, which are procedure activations that execute concurrently and share the same, persistent virtual address space. They are semantically similar to 'threads' or 'lightweight processes' in some operating systems. Processes are values. They are just associative tables and have all of the characteristics of other EZ values, including persistence. Examples of their use and a brief overview of their implementation are included.