[[ [Scripted Compiler] :: '''Code generation''' ]]
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Nothing concrete here yet.

References

   * compilers & interpreters archive -- runtime code generation subject area [http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/SEL-HPC/Articles/GeneratedHtml/comp.rcg.html]

   * compilers & interpreters archive -- general code generation techniques subject area [http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/SEL-HPC/Articles/GeneratedHtml/comp.gen.html]

   * [Cameron Laird]'s Regular Expressions Column [http://regularexpressions.com] talked in April 2004 about 'Rapid Development of An Assembler Using Python' [http://www.unixreview.com/documents/s=2472/ur0404e/].  Also coded in [Python], and therefore scriptable in it, is Atul Varma's "Mini-C Compiler" [http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~varmaa/mini_c/].

Keyword: BURS - Bottom Up Rewrite System - Related to LR parsing.

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'''Discussions'''

[AK]:
The runtime assembler/code-generator [Lightning] (written in C) is GPL,
the concept however can be used to generate machine code from within Tcl,
plus some bits to write [ELF], [COFF], etc. libraries the low-level
backend would be done.

[jcw]:
''Too much machinery - I'd generate raw into a bytearray.  Store it
that way too.  ELF is for linkers and other arcane concepts <wink>''

[AK]:
Do not forget pre-compiling of binaries. Even if the compiler is in an
extension I do not want to deliver it with every application. Especially
not wrapped applications..

[jcw]:
''Absolutely.  Which is why I said: "store it that way too".''

[AK]:
Hm, sort of like tbcload, but machine code ? ... A mixture of bytecode
and machine code might be of interest. A loader format containing binary data
in a script language wrapper ... Oh, I just remember [Oberon]'s ''[Slim Binaries]''.
These store a portable AST of the input (not bytecode) and use a simple
compiler/mapper to machine code when loading. Lower-level than Tcl bytecodes,
and are still as efficient as machine code, because in the end they are
machine-code. I think I will start a new thread below to collect and merge
the thoughts into something cohesive.

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Softwire: http://softwire.sourceforge.net/ (LGPL)

See also [tcc], which can compile and run C in core, but also knows about ELF.
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[[ [Scripted Compiler] :: '''Code generation''' ]]