Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.daimi.aau.dk!eernst From: eernst@quercus.daimi.aau.dk (Erik Ernst) Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta Subject: Re: combining interpreted and compiled beta Date: 09 May 1995 16:51:03 GMT Organization: DAIMI, Computer Science Dept. of Aarhus Univ. Lines: 50 Message-ID: References: <3odc7a$dac@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> NNTP-Posting-Host: quercus.daimi.aau.dk In-reply-to: Hans Erik Martino Hansen's message of 5 May 1995 14:20:26 GMT Because of news delay problems, this posting may be redundant ("somebody" might have responded already :-) Anyway: In article <3odc7a$dac@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> Hans Erik Martino Hansen writes: As a computerscientist student I have expirienced interpreted languages as well as compiled ones. I am convinced one can develop faster in an interpreted language than a compiled one. Why not combine the two things in beta, the idea is as follows: Compile a complete beta interpreter into the executable. Have you checked out the PhD-thesis of Jawahar Malhotra? He investigated this idea, designed an interpreter which can be linked into any BETA-program, and implemented a version of it for an HP platform. I'm not quite sure which versions of OS and compiler it will work with, but it is not likely to support all platforms supported by the compiler, and perhaps it only works with an older version of the compiler. Also, there could be parts of the language that are not yet supported (I know that there has been problems related to 'leave ' for cases where both compiled and interpreted code is 'un-wound' from the stack. Somebody else should know much more about this). I couldn't even find the thesis or any mention of it in the ftp-able files reachable from the BETA www home pages; .. "contrib"? .. "papers"? (hint! hint!, please elaborate, "somebody"!) The advantages will then be speedier development, and a macrolanguage for free. Do you think this is a good idea, doable or will it be better to take the step and only use an interpreter. Yes!! I think it would be very nice to be able to have a built-in interpreter for BETA in any BETA application where you want it. It takes some work to implement it across all platforms and for the entire language, though. cheers, -- Erik Ernst eernst@daimi.aau.dk Computer Science Department of Aarhus University, Denmark