Re: Java virtual machine as target language for C/C++

Arch Robison <robison@kai.com> wrote:
>[It seems little information is lost when translating Java to
> bytecodes, in contrast to other VMs that I've seen.]


Several VM's have very low information loss. I believe that
Smalltalk-80, for example, can give source code displays by
decompiling the bytecodes (again, spacing and comments are
lost). Also, I've used BASIC interpreters where the tokenized form
is used for both text storage and interpretation; it included
markers for storing comments.


I've mislaid the reference, but Peter J. Brown had an article that
I *believe* appeared in an early (71-74) issue of Software--Practice
and Experience, that was about how to augment a VM to contain the
remaining information. There was also a followup a few issues later
on a more time-efficient way of performing the decorations.


;-D on ( Space-deficient representations ) Pardo


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