Re: Dynamic Evaluation & Precompiled Bytecode

"Avatar" <acampbellb@hotmail.com> writes:
>I am researching the development of a dynamic language similar in many
>respects to popular "scripting" languages like perl, python, and ruby.
>
>The high-level language should be compiled to bytecode which is then
>executed within a VM.
>
>The language should alos support dynamic code evaluation which would
>necessitate on-the-fly compilation into bytecode. Is it possible for a
>dynamic language to support both forms of generated bytecode?


If your system supports run-time code generation, you typically design
it such that there is only one form of code. Why would you make a
difference between the run-time generated code and the code you
generate on startup?


>My specific question has to do with the representation of symbolic
>information within precompiled versus on-the-fly compiled bytecode.


What do you mean with precompiled? Are you not talking about a
load-and-go compiler like Perl and Python? If you want to support an
external representation for the code, this costs extra effort; are the
benefits (if any) worth this cost?


In any case, even if you want to deal with an external representation,
maybe you should approach your problem as if you wrote a load-and-go
compiler, and deal with the saving and loading of the external
representation just as extra steps.


- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

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