• bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> Mar 10 2010
• Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> Mar 10 2010

bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:

Andrei Alexandrescu:
 integration of interpretation with compilation,


Isn't it better to use the compiler to run the functions at compile time, in a
staged compilation? This removes the development & maintenance burden of the
interpreter, that must be kept in sync with the semantics of the main compiler.
A possible downside is that the compiler needs to be called many times, and
this can slow down the main compilation.

Bye,
bearophile

Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:

On 03/10/2010 01:05 PM, bearophile wrote:
 Andrei Alexandrescu:
 integration of interpretation with compilation,


 Isn't it better to use the compiler to run the functions at compile
 time, in a staged compilation? This removes the development&
 maintenance burden of the interpreter, that must be kept in sync with
 the semantics of the main compiler. A possible downside is that the
 compiler needs to be called many times, and this can slow down the
 main compilation.


Staged compilation is an active research topic and many approaches could 
be better than what we have now. I was merely enumerating D features 
that are not present in mainstream languages.

Andrei