parse tree --> running program/script...

I've been working on a simple 'perl like'* script language, and
everything is great so far (who knew writing a parser was so easy :),
but I'm having a little trouble trying to decide how to continue.


1) should I execute the parse tree directly?
2) or maybe implement some sort of virtual machine?


I figure 1 is slow and costly to re run a script, while 2 should be
much faster and robust. To me it seems 1 just doesn't feel right, but
2 sounds like a lot of work... I don't mind the work though, I'd just
need some information on how to implement it. (instruction set,
stack... et.al)


thanks.
Tom Fjellstrom


*p.s. It's not really all that perl like... maybe perl 2/3 :).
            theres no packages (yet) or regexs.
[Turning a parse tree into reverse polish tokens isn't very hard. -John]

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