Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize)

William D Clinger <will@ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>In the long term I think the most serious problem is that the obvious
>implementation of a dynamically typed language in the Java VM is to
>represent all values as Java objects. You could hack up a special
>case for integers, but the strong typing of the Java VM makes it hard
>to do that without slowing everything else.


Probably the most efficient way of fixing this is to add a primitive
tagged type. E.g. as well as iload for integers and aload for objects,
add a 'tload' instruction for tagged values, and similarly for every
other VM instruction.


It would take a litle work to make tagged values interoperable with
untagged ones (so that Java libraries could be called from a
non-statically- typed language and vice-versa), but there is nothing
insoluble here.


David Hopwood
david.hopwood@lmh.ox.ac.uk
--

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