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[Johnny Billquist]

On 2017-12-31 04:56, Robert Armstrong wrote:
>> Well, sortof not. It is asynchronous to your program flow.
> 
>    If you want to look at it that way, then the "T" is wrong - it should be
> an "asynchronous interrupt".  However you slice it, "asynchronous" and
> "trap" don't go together.

Well, you could argue that "trap" is appropriate as it is synchronous to 
instruction execution. Hence my comments. It is appropriate to call it 
trap because of that property. Basically, anything that comes out of a 
software construct has to be a trap. But it's asynchronous to your 
program flow. So AST is maybe not such a bad word for it.

But of course, this is all splitting hairs. I find it a good term, but 
I'm okay with finding it a bad one.

But it is still worth noting that SST also does exist.

(And asynchronous interrupt would be an ugly term, and confusing, I 
think. There isn't necessarily any interrupt related to the trap at all, 
and just trap and interrupt by themselves already have established 
meanings in computers, as you note, and ASTs are not truly well 
described by either term.)

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol