Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize)

david.hopwood@lady-margaret-hall.oxford.ac.uk (David Hopwood)
29 Jan 1996 17:44:16 -0500

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Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize) jbuck@Synopsys.COM (1996-01-25)
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Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize) lwall@sems.com (1996-01-25)
Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize) will@ccs.neu.edu (1996-01-27)
Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize) hbaker@netcom.com (1996-01-27)
Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize) balld@sunSITE.unc.edu (1996-01-27)
Re: Possible to write compiler to Java VM? (I volunteer to summarize) david.hopwood@lady-margaret-hall.oxford.ac.uk (1996-01-29)
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From: david.hopwood@lady-margaret-hall.oxford.ac.uk (David Hopwood)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.java,comp.compilers,comp.lang.scheme
Date: 29 Jan 1996 17:44:16 -0500
Organization: Oxford University, England
References: 96-01-049 96-01-050 96-01-086
Keywords: translator, GC

William D Clinger <will@ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
>In the long term I think the most serious problem is that the obvious
>implementation of a dynamically typed language in the Java VM is to
>represent all values as Java objects. You could hack up a special
>case for integers, but the strong typing of the Java VM makes it hard
>to do that without slowing everything else.


Probably the most efficient way of fixing this is to add a primitive
tagged type. E.g. as well as iload for integers and aload for objects,
add a 'tload' instruction for tagged values, and similarly for every
other VM instruction.


It would take a litle work to make tagged values interoperable with
untagged ones (so that Java libraries could be called from a
non-statically- typed language and vice-versa), but there is nothing
insoluble here.


David Hopwood
david.hopwood@lmh.ox.ac.uk
--


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