On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 08:51:08PM +0100, Bart Lateur wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Nov 2000 14:15:57 -0500, Dan Sugalski wrote:
>
> >>We bootstrap on perl5 to get a bytecode stream, and then that bytecode
> >>stream had better stay supported.
> >
> >Yup. It's one way to ensure backwards compatibility... :)
>
> I assume a byte is still 8 bits? So you have a max of 256 different (1
> byte) opcodes? What if Perl6 has more than 256 instructions (as it
The 'byte' in 'bytecode' is not necessarily equal to 'byte' of 8 bits.
> I have had some thoughts on "dynamic opcodes", where the meaning of
> opcode bytes needn't be fixed, but can be dynamically assigned,
> depending on how often they occur (for example). A bit like how a
> Huffman compressor may choose shorter representations for the most
> occurring byte patterns.
Enough coffee for you, I think :-)
> Just some wild thinking.
--
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# There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'.
# It is 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
