Answer derived from this blog article: So my question is what would a more traditional functional approach to parsing (i.e. few side effects) look like? Sounds like you need to separate functional (as in Lisp, Scheme, Standard ML, CAML, OCaml, F#) from purity (absence of side effects, as in Haskell) and incidental language features (algebraic … Read more
Since this is a research question, we’ve got a few possible ways forward, but they all come down to: Play tricks reversing the tag bits of Maybe
Many Lisp compilers compile to ‘native’ code. ‘Native’ means here ‘machine code’ (x86 in 32bit or 64bit mode, PowerPC, SPARC, …). Other questions: can ‘non-native code’ compilers generate single file executables? -> Yes. can ‘native code’ compilers generate single file executables? -> Yes. how ‘native’ is ‘native’? -> Lisp system will most of the time … Read more
@kuszi Put a great answer as a comment to the question, but I almost missed it because it was a comment rather than the answer. This link goes to a huuuge list of REPs and REPLs for tons of languages.
Java code is normally distributed as bytecode, which is machine-independent pseudocode. (The same idea was previously used in UCSD-p system developed in the 70’ies.) The advantage of this is that the same application can be run in different processors and operating systems. In addition, the bytecode is often smaller than compiled application. The disadvantage is … Read more
I think I’d be tempted to flag that Wikipedia quote with [citation needed]; the assumptions are, at least, questionable. For example, there are a large number of compiler-construction tools based on yacc which make it extremely easy, in practice, to construct a parser using the more powerful (and equally fast) LALR algorithm, and some also … Read more
Dr. Dobbs just published an article by Walter Bright (of dlang fame), where he mentions the term: Lowering One semantic technique that is obvious in hindsight (but took Andrei Alexandrescu to point out to me) is called “lowering.” It consists of, internally, rewriting more complex semantic constructs in terms of simpler ones. For example, while … Read more
for C++ on Linux, you can do: objdump –source yourbin |grep printf Replace printf with whatever function call you do. If it is debug, it will display all the actual source code call you do. If it is release, it will just display the founded symbol from the symbol table. for C++ on Windows, you … Read more
A very good description of compiling pattern matching is given in “The implementation of functional programming languages” by Simon Peyton Jones. It is a bit old but a very good book. It also contains, amongst other things, a description of compiling list comprehensions. The Erlang compiler uses both of these algorithms from the book.
A virtual machine isn’t exactly an alternative to compilers or interpreters. I think you are thinking of a JIT compiler, which is how many VMs are implemented. A virtual machine itself is exactly what the name says – it’s a machine (processor) that doesn’t actually exist. For example, most processors don’t have any intrinsic way … Read more