[virtmach] Test, Hello

thaddaeus.frogley@creaturelabs.com thaddaeus.frogley@creaturelabs.com
Wed, 19 Apr 2000 09:56:45 +0100


> Do you also have to design the programming 
> language in which scripts will be written? 

No, that's already been done.

> Do you have a clear specificatio of the semantic requirements of 
> the  scripting language or is it a pile of marketing hot air? 
> Are you building the bytecode compiler?

Its not well specified, but a prototype compiler / vm exists.  It was
decided that although the language was fine, the compiler and vm had to be
re done (both where fundamentally flawed in many areas).  

I'm doing the VM, somebody else is doing the compiler.

> Do you want to dynamically link bytecode modules? 

Yes.  The VM is for an agent based system, and the agents are loaded into a
running system, so some name resolution has to be done at load time.

> using multi-byte opcodes for infrequently-used 
> (but otherwise essential) primitives. 

Yes, I'm going to be doing that.  I'll have a think about the hufman
encoding, but I don't think it would be fast enough.  My current plan is to
have a look up table for the op-code implementations, something like this:

	while (pc!=end){
		//...
		instruction = *pc;
		(fnLookup[instruction.opcode])();
		// ...
	}
	

Thanks for your input.

Thad