From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
Subject: Re: What's the spec for emacs lisp virtual machine ?
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:57:31 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <barmar-80D8E9.13573123072010@news.eternal-september.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 61a26ed5-80eb-4175-b7c4-162a1ce21a59@e5g2000yqn.googlegroups.com
In article
<61a26ed5-80eb-4175-b7c4-162a1ce21a59@e5g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
Fren Zeee <frenzeee@gmail.com> wrote:
> portability does not require VM, it only requires C while emacs
> interprets the lisp code. a diff command in C is portable over
> computers because its written in C. not because of a VM.
An interpreter *is* a VM. The "machine language" of this VM is the
language being interpreted.
Maybe what you're really asking is whether we need byte code? That's
just an optimization. Compiling to machine code is even more of an
optimization, but then the result is not portable. So a byte code VM is
a compromise between source code interpretation and machine code
compilation.
--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2010-07-23 17:57 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2010-07-23 6:12 What's the spec for emacs lisp virtual machine ? Fren Zeee
2010-07-23 8:34 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2010-07-23 15:59 ` Fren Zeee
2010-07-23 16:01 ` Fren Zeee
2010-07-23 16:03 ` Fren Zeee
2010-07-23 16:41 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2010-07-23 17:57 ` Barry Margolin [this message]
2010-07-23 16:40 ` Pascal J. Bourguignon
2010-07-30 3:51 ` mdj
2010-07-30 5:01 ` Fren Zeee
2010-07-30 5:28 ` mdj
2010-07-30 5:41 ` Fren Zeee
2010-08-02 19:35 ` Barry Margolin
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2010-07-23 6:15 Fren Zeee
2010-07-23 7:28 ` Alfred M. Szmidt
2010-07-23 16:18 ` Fren Zeee
2010-07-23 17:13 ` Chong Yidong
2010-07-23 7:51 ` Thien-Thi Nguyen
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