Question

The following example involves jumping into continuation and exiting out. Can somebody explain the flow of the function. I am moving in a circle around continuation, and do not know the entry and exit points of the function.

(define (prod-iterator lst)
  (letrec ((return-result empty)
        (resume-visit (lambda (dummy) (process-list lst 1)))
        (process-list
         (lambda (lst p)
           (if (empty? lst)
               (begin
                 (set! resume-visit (lambda (dummy) 0))
                 (return-result p))
               (if (= 0 (first lst))
                   (begin
                     (call/cc ; Want to continue here after delivering result     
                      (lambda (k)
                        (set! resume-visit k)
                        (return-result p)))
                     (process-list (rest lst) 1))
                   (process-list (rest lst) (* p (first lst))))))))
    (lambda ()
      (call/cc
       (lambda (k)
         (set! return-result k)
         (resume-visit 'dummy))))))

(define iter (prod-iterator '(1 2 3 0 4 5 6 0 7 0 0 8 9)))
(iter) ; 6                                                                        
(iter) ; 120                                                                      
(iter) ; 7                                                                        
(iter) ; 1                                                                        
(iter) ; 72                                                                       
(iter) ; 0                                                                        
(iter) ; 0

Thanks.

Answer 1

The procedure iterates over a list, multiplying non-zero members and returning a result each time a zero is found. Resume-visit stores the continuation for processing the rest of the list, and return-result has the continuation of the call-site of the iterator. In the beginning, resume-visit is defined to process the entire list. Each time a zero is found, a continuation is captured, which when invoked executes (process-list (rest lst) 1) for whatever value lst had at the time. When the list is exhausted, resume-visit is set to a dummy procedure. Moreover, every time the program calls iter, it executes the following:

(call/cc
   (lambda (k)
     (set! return-result k)
     (resume-visit 'dummy)))

That is, it captures the continuation of the caller, invoking it returns a value to the caller. The continuation is stored and the program jumps to process the rest of the list.
When the procedure calls resume-visit, the loop is entered, when return-result is called, the loop is exited.

If we want to examine process-list in more detail, let’s assume the list is non-empty. Tho procedure employs basic recursion, accumulating a result until a zero is found. At that point, p is the accumulated value and lst is the list containing the zero. When we have a construction like (begin (call/cc (lambda (k) first)) rest), we first execute first expressions with k bound to a continuation. It is a procedure that when invoked, executes rest expressions. In this case, that continuation is stored and another continuation is invoked, which returns the accumulated result p to the caller of iter. That continuation will be invoked the next time iter is called, then the loop continues with the rest of the list. That is the point with the continuations, everything else is basic recursion.