Re: Compiler and interpreter origins

Jeff Kenton <Jeffrey.Kenton@comcast.net>
4 Aug 2004 02:44:48 -0400

          From comp.compilers

Related articles
Compiler and interpreter origins la@iki.fi (Lauri Alanko) (2004-07-28)
Re: Compiler and interpreter origins Jeffrey.Kenton@comcast.net (Jeff Kenton) (2004-08-04)
Re: Compiler and interpreter origins rweaver@ix.netcom.com (Dick Weaver) (2004-08-05)
Re: Compiler and interpreter origins gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) (2004-08-05)
Re: Compiler and interpreter origins rbates@southwind.net (Rodney M. Bates) (2004-08-09)
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[7 later articles]
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From: Jeff Kenton <Jeffrey.Kenton@comcast.net>
Newsgroups: comp.compilers
Date: 4 Aug 2004 02:44:48 -0400
Organization: Comcast Online
References: 04-07-077
Keywords: history
Posted-Date: 04 Aug 2004 02:44:48 EDT

Lauri Alanko wrote:


> Firstly, back when everything was done in pure machine code or
> assembly, how common was the use of self-modifying code?


Very common. For example, the IBM 7094 had a whole class of
instructions explicitly for writing self-modifying code --
instructions to load and store the opcode portion of words
(instructions), and the register field, and the address field.


There is a very nice paper by Ken Thompson on regular expression
matching that generates a state machine on the fly on the 7094. Each
chunk of code is a state. (It was granted US Patent 3,568,156,
entitled "Text Matching Algorithm," filed 9 Aug 1967, issued 2 Mar
1971, inventor Ken Thompson.)
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