Re: [TDR] Token-Based Compilers

tdarcos@mcimail.com (Paul Robinson) writes:
>I'd like to ask what people think of the idea of Compilers that generate
>ficticious machine code, i.e. tokens for an optimized machine which is
>then interpreted on the target.


I believe Microsoft uses P-Code in many of its shipping products for the
Macintosh. Microsoft Word has an enormous 'PCOD' resource in it, which I
take to be the result of some kind of cross-platform compilation tool.


I am very interested in finding out what the various trade-offs are in
compiling to pseudo code. And what type of instructions to provide. I am
thinking very seriously about writing a C interpreter using just such a
technique. Has anybody any references on designs of P-Code instruction
sets?


// Patrick C. Beard
// Department of Computer Science, U. C. Davis
// pcbeard@ucdavis.edu
[Microsoft has always used p-code for all versions of Word. The p-code
compiler used to be internal only until it was made part of MS C. Current
versions of their C compiler can generate p-code and come with the
interpreter. As you might expect, the p-code is considerably smaller and
slower than native code. -John]
--

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