Re: Pros and cons of high-level intermediate languages

acha@CS.CMU.EDU (Anurag Acharya) said:


> Wish list:


> 1. label variables. Any kind of label variables with any resonable
> restrictions


Available from gcc 2.0 and higher; we use it to good effect in our Smalltalk
interpreter (single largest speed improvement we've ever gotten!). So you have
something that's portable from machine to machine, but specific to a given
family of compilers.


> 2. A portable way of looking at the stack. Supporting garbage
> collection and call/cc (user-level continuations) would be easier if
> one could traipse up and down the C stack. Currently, such schemes are
> machine and compiler dependent.


Sorry, I don't know of any way to do that. And you have to include registers
in the model, too.


> 3. Some form of global register assignment. Some annotation scheme
> that allows me to indicate to the C compiler that I would like a
> particular global variable to be stuck in a register (may be a
> particular register if I am willing to give up portability).


gcc supports this, but the incantation and possible bad side effects do vary
from machine to machine.
--


J. Eliot B. Moss, Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Lederle Graduate Research Center
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
(413) 545-4206, 545-1249 (fax); Moss@cs.umass.edu
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