Version 18 of TAL

Updated 2012-08-21 15:50:23 by AK

Tcl Assembly Language.

See MS's bytecode engine ideas and The anatomy of a bytecoded command for more explanations.

Examples

Fib in TAL, by kbk, 2012-08-21

Discussion


CMcC: I've put some incomplete work on tcl script generation of bytecodes here: http://wiki.tcl.tk/_repo/bytecode/

It dates from Apr03, and may not even compile - it's certainly incomplete.


Zarutian 28. oktober 2006: hmm... specifying the grammar of TAL shouldn't be hard.

Backus Naur Forms:

  <statement> ::= [<label>] <instruction> "\n"
  <label>   ::= <alpanumeric string> ":"
  <instruction> ::= <mnemonic name> [<parameter>]*

Type of instructions needed:

  • Arithmetic and logic operations
  • Input/Output
  • Memory fetching and storage
  • Branching

But the question is: what architecture does TAL target? Tcl bytecodes?

AK (Jan 10 2007): AFAIK it would target Tcl bytecodes. As for the grammar, I would say it should be a list representation in general, and anything more formatted can be derived from that, i.e., for display, maybe editing, etc.

DKF (same day): It should be noted that currently it is obscenely difficult to manage branching properly, especially when they are forward jumps. It should also be noted that there are some instructions that it is probably difficult to issue outside the main BCC anyway, as they use complex blocks of metadata (especially those relating to foreach loops and switch jump-tables).