On Sat, 10 Jun 2017 16:41:16 -0700, Charles Mills <[email protected]> wrote:

>A refreshable program may modify itself, right? REFR does not say "I don't 
>modify myself" it says "you can reload me if you want." Almost >the same 
>thing, but not quite.

The key, I think, is that the system may reload the program at _any_ time, even 
on the instruction immediately after it modifies itself. Therefore, there is no 
_safe_ way for a refreshable program to do such a modification, as it cannot 
make any assumptions about how long the modification will survive. At least a 
RENT program can use serialization to allow safe modifications (FSVO "safe"), 
but a REFR program doesn't have that ability.

-- 
Walt

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