Control flows in Heaven with Scala 2.8 Continuations - Part 3

This is going to be a short one. Let's just recall from my previous post in the Scala Continuations series that a shift call's return value is the continuation function's input value and both have type A. The shift call's type is always decorated (by the type inferrer plugin or by the programmer) with the @[B, C] type annotation, where B is the return value of the continuation function and C is the return value of the redirect function (and of the reset call).

This is where things really get tricky but don't be discouraged!

Let's now suppose we want to use the shift call twice in a single toplevelContinuationFunction body and on the same redirect function argument: this means that the continuation built by the first shift call will contain ONLY the code that will execute up to the next shift call, then will build another continuation and finally will transfer immediately control to the redirect function.
This is the turning point: when the latter returns, ending the second reset, it returns with a value of type C. BUT, its return point is actually the return of the first continuation function call as well, which has type B!

So, this brings us to the following consideration: in order to have multiple shift calls in the same reset block, B must equal C.

This experiment also makes even more apparent a couple of things: continuations "invert" the normal program control flow and the continuations plugin is very good at capturing continuations behaviour with small typechecking and code transformation extensions to the Scala type system and compiler.

Looking forward to seeing it in action in a final 2.8 release soon!