On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, David Grove wrote:
> If we were simply feeding it perl with a single syntax, we could get away
> with a "one call" scheme. But since we're dealing with almost certainly
> mutually exclusive syntax and semantics, it probably needs more
> information.
Perhaps the "one call" can take some arguements? I suppose it would need
to know what kind of syntax to expect.
> Larry's desires for the language, we need multiple possible ways to input,
> and multiple possible ways to output, but internally we need that language
> agnostic thing.
Bytecode, right?
> I don't think so. In a compiler I don't believe that the intermediate step
> is there
It definitely is. Few optimizations are possible without an intermediate
representation of some kind!
> , and I've never seen any compiler accept multiple input semantics
GCC - recently renamed the "Gnu Compiler Collection" for a reason!
> and multiple output (meaning binary, bytecode, java, c#) (okay, C++
This also not uncommon - you can look at cross-compilers as one example.
Java compilers that can produce bytecode and native code is another.
> Can somebody let me know if any of what I've said is relevant?
Highly relevent, but also somewhat "known". I think you would be
interested in reading a good book on compiler design. The dragon-book is
a perenial favorite, although there might be more up-to-date material
available these days. At least, I hope there is!
-sam
