Re: Language/Compiler for 8/16 bit processor?

mago@legba.sunmexico.Sun.COM (Gerardo Horvilleur) writes:
>What I want to do is design a language that can be efficiently translated
>to 65816 assembly language. The 65816 is a 16 bit version of the 6502.


I have written a C compiler for a 6502 based system (BBC Micro). My first
attempt at code generation was to write directly to machine code.
However, the code generated was too slow to run because of the large
support library required. I gave up the machine code and generated P-code
lookalike instead. I wrote an interpreter and linked it with the
interpreted code (yes, I had to write the linker too). You could also put
the interpreter in ROM to make the programs smaller.


I have since written C and C++ compilers for an ARM based machine. This
processor was designed to be a good compiler target and was much easier to
generate direct machine code.


BTW, I want to write a Pascal compiler next. I think it would be quite
easy to get the parser to generate a C parse tree, as then I could use the
same semantic analyser, optimiser and code generator. Does anyone think
this is silly?


Dave
----
                Dave Allison, BT Belfast Engineering Centre
                dallison@bfsec.bt.co.uk +44 232 894297
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.