> The machine is very strange in modern terms. It doesn't have registers, it > executes code in reverse Polish, the integer data type is a degenerate form > of the floating point data type, pointers are magic, there are no page > tables, and the word size isn't a power of 2, just to start. Oh, and the > integers (floating point mantissas with exponent of zero) are > sign/magnitude. And boolean quantities are even/odd, rather than > zero/nonzero. >... > Does it seem feasible to be able to add a new math data type and still > expect things to work? Or is this a 'flat impossibility'? Any pointers on > what I should start looking at in the compiler?
It's unclear whether you're trying to generate code to run on this machine, or have gcc accept binaries for this machine as a "sourse" language, or both. If you're trying to generate code for this machine, then I have to ask why. You mention that you're running on an emulator anyway, so why not just run new code directly for the machine running the emulator, which is persumably a vaguely sane architecture. If you're trying to use gcc as a binary translator (ie. feeding the original binaries in and getting something a native application out) then I would seriously consider writing a translator that generates C or C++, then feeding that through a normal compiler. Either way, it doesn't sound like hacking gcc is worth the effort. I find it hard to believe that people are actually writing new code for such a bizarre machine. Paul
